


ACOMAF Part 1: The House of Beasts (Rhys POV)

by illyriantremors



Series: A Court of Mist and Fury: Rhysand's POV [1]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: And Morrigan helps, Angst, F/M, Minor Violence, Rhys POV, Rhys throws a pity party, acomaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 17:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9832124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: The first 13 chapters of ACOMAF told from Rhys's POV. Includes some brief details of his three months without her after he comes home from UtM and some improvised scenes, but most of it concerns his time with Feyre.





	1. Hello Feyre Darling (Chapters 1-4)

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter of this fic roughly encompasses Chapters 1-4.
> 
> *****This series does continue all the way through CHAPTER 56 of the book. Subsequent chapters are linked as a series to this Part 1. When you are done with Chapter 7 of Part 1, there should be linkage to read the next fic if you are interested. A lot of people comment on Part 1 asking for more and it's already posted, so I'm adding this note here just in case. :)

The mountains of the Illyrian Steppes wrought a chill through my bones I hadn’t felt in years.

We flew for most of the day, listening to wherever the shadows at my brother’s back directed us, until at last the sun began to set and we landed in a small clearing between the trees.

They were close. Near enough to sent them on the tendrils of wind that carried their blood and sweat through the heavy pine of the woods. Since my return, I’d lost count of the number of rogue Illyrian war bands I’d had to hunt down and confront. And that wasn’t counting the number Cassian and Azriel had taken care of in my absence.

Today’s hunt felt restless. The outcome had been decided the moment we left the Steppes. These primal encounters never changed even if I spent the hours flying faster towards them hoping they would.

A confrontation. An offering of second chances. Bow down and obey - or pay the debt they owed for the blood they’d spilt, the debt for using fifty years of freedom to push the boundaries however they pleased.

The Night Court would need every drop in the coming weeks that it could spare. Petty disagreements over territory, among other things, wasn’t something I could deal with in the middle of a shift that sought to overthrow the entirety of Prythian.

And once Illyrian alliances shifted, they rarely shifted back.

So in blood, they usually ended.

We threaded through the trees, Cassian and Azriel silently stalking several paces out on either side of me until we hit the gap where the band made camp. It was a small legion, perhaps a dozen or so with their chosen lord in the center. An exquisite gash ran down the center of his cheek. No doubt he had been forced to earn his rank, had likely volunteered for the blood bath.

I wondered what they had done with the bodies, if they’d bothered to bury them properly in Illyrian fashion or had left them to rot in the snow.

Their heads turned in our direction as we neared close enough for them to catch our scent, but by then it was already too late. I held their minds steady from the grip of my power long before the three of us cleared the trees lining the perimeter of their camp.

My brothers strode quietly out from the trees, the swords they’d been gifted at the Blood Rite brandished in their hands in an offensive gesture, ready to strike at a moment’s signal from me.

Slowly, I narrowed my eyes on the newly elected lord and approached, tendrils of darkness trailing in my wake, my wings stretched out wide enough at my back to send a jolt of fear down even the toughest Illyrian’s back.

“Do I need to bother asking?”

My voice was flat, hardly even a question as the lord looked me over once and spat directly at my feet.  _ “Whore,” _ he cursed and internally, I savored the feel of my mental claws dragging through his mind, undoing every last piece of who he was and would ever become before I let his body fall limp and ragged to the snow. I didn’t even wait. Little impulses of pain trembled along his skin and muscles in those last seconds before he gave up and was no more.

All round me, the forest rang silent save for the bitter, cold wind howling my sins in my ears.

Red splattered in harsh contrast against the snow at my feet, large sloppy drops dripping from Truth-Teller’s blade.

Azriel looked stoically at me as if he hadn’t just shed the blood of a half-dozen men he’d once shared camp with. I often wondered how he managed to lock that darkness away so well.

Slowly, he lifted a brow as snow crunched between Cassian’s heavy boots on my other side.

“Rhys?” Cassian said, dragging my attention down to my hands. They were shaking in a near violent manner.

_ Whore. _

“Let’s go.”

“Rhys-”

I grabbed both their hands and winnowed on the spot before they could say another word.

I did not join them at the House of Wind that night for dinner.

* * *

There was blood everywhere.

All over the three young fae hooded and kneeling on the unforgiving marble floor, the dagger I watched fall clattering to that same ground, and most especially all over  _ her _ .

Feyre stood reaching with a trembling hand for the second dagger covered in blood. Her clothes were soaked from merely one kill that shouldn’t have garnered that much evidence of her deeds. It carried onto her hands - her poor, stuttering hands that plunged themselves upon the fae woman singing herself into death’s waiting arms.

Amarantha sat poised on the throne calling Feyre on with praise. It felt disgustingly wrong.

Feyre pulled the third dagger and I knew what to expect as the veil was to be lifted on the final victim. Tamlin would be waiting and then our fate would be in the hands of this small human girl none of us knew. I felt like I was going to be sick even as Feyre questioned whether or not she could go through with one more murder - just  _ one more murder _ , and we would all be free. Such a steep price to pay for her.

The hood lifted. Silence fell.

The blood stood out in stark relief against the resounding quiet of the room.

Feyre knelt before the third victim - before herself, her ears turned up into two stiff points, her skin smooth and blended into a soft perfection only my own breed possessed. And her body, which had become so long and elegant with its new fae gifted powers, sat strongly before her, beseeching her move forward.

And that’s when I knew where I was.

I saw Amarantha up on her throne because I saw her from Feyre’s eyes and not my own place on the dias where I should have been. This was nothing new. We’d been inside this prison countless times before and always we failed to get out alive.

_ Murderer. _

The words chanted inside Feyre’s mind as a flurry of self-loathing and hopelessness I only ever felt inside myself welled up beneath her skin.

_ Butcher. _

She angled the dagger at herself and my lungs screamed inside of me to stop her as I felt her anticipate the relief that blade could give her.  _ No, no, never - _

_ Monster. _

A relief she welcomed, craved even. It was horrifying to watch, to feel.

_ Liar. _

And it killed me to think she could see herself that way, in any way other than the determined, resourceful woman I’d met Under the Mountain who had saved us all and lost herself in the process.

“Feyre!” I screamed inside her mind, as violently and brutally as I once had to stop Amarantha from attacking her.

_ Deceiver. _

But it was too late.

Feyre thrusted the knife into her own chest and I watched as my mate willingly committed suicide before my own eyes. Somehow, it was a thousand times worse than hearing her neck snap against her will.

* * *

I was already half-awake when I felt Feyre wake me from her nightmare.

Maybe my body was adjusting, learning to anticipate these moments each night, waking me up hours before the day needed me.

But Feyre needed me - needed someone. And so each night, I readied myself to be stolen prematurely from sleep. If I thought it might be a welcome reprieve from my own nightmares, I was wrong. Watching Feyre suffer was infinitely worse than doing it myself.

Her mind read like an open book when she woke like this and tumbled blindly out of bed racing for the bathroom. Had it not been for her own obsession with marking Tamlin’s position strewn about the sheets, willfully ignoring her distress, I wouldn’t have even realized he was there consuming her energy.

But he was there and night after night I watched her pretend it didn’t hurt her not to have him wake up at her movements, her tremors.

Calmly, I rose from bed and walked to my own bathing room that stretched wide and luxuriously off my townhouse. Most visits to these chambers, I indulged my wings in the freedom the space allowed, but tonight, I allowed no trace of them.

Sitting down between the toilet and the edges of the bathing pool, I felt the cool porcelain meet my back and waited for Feyre to finish retching... hundreds of miles away. Sweat coated both our brows. Feyre’s brown-gold hair fell against her face, a curtain around my own vision as I blacked out the waste filling the toilet in front of her - in front of us.

I wished I could see her eyes. It was, perhaps, the cruelest and most overlooked portion of my bargain with her. The bond linking us showed me what Feyre saw, but Feyre never looked at herself. Never gazed into any mirrors or wandered past lakes or meadows or reflective surfaces of any kind that might give me a glance at her face. I knew she wasn’t getting out that frequently much to my regrettable ire, so the lack of scenery in her life didn’t entirely surprise me, but the fact that she actively avoided her own reflection in the privacy of her rooms spoke volumes enough.

Redness stung sharply at Feyre’s eyes and at last, I felt her pull back and cling to herself, scrambling only mere inches away for the open window that revealed the night sky and she wiped the slickness away from her cheeks. Whatever remained was soon dried by the cool, crisp air kissing her skin.

Were her eyes more grey or blue tonight? I couldn’t remember from when I looked at her Under the Mountain, how the colors changed with her growing distress.

_ This is real _ , she thought.  _ I survived. I made it out. _

She had survived. She was free.

But still, she huddled around herself hugging her knees to her chest as though she were anything but.

Agony sank into my stomach as I felt her sharpened nails dig into her skin at the fists she’d tightened, as she gasped for air in deep breathes I took alongside her out the open window. She struggled for air, anything to feel a stasis again and there was only so much of it the night sky could provide her.

My night sky. I felt like a failure every time the stars blinked out in front of her and she lost herself a little bit more.

_ Real. _

She mouthed the word to herself over and over again.

_ Yes, this is real _ , I thought, but I didn’t say it loud enough for her to hear.

For three months I’d sat back and watched just like Tamlin had on his seat next to Amarantha. For three months, I’d quietly convinced myself that the mask I wore Under the Mountain had become my real mask here at home. For three months, I convinced myself that the glorious emerald sitting on Feyre’s finger, the tears of joy she’d cried receiving it, were exactly what she wanted - what she deserved.

Tamlin.

She had done all of this for Tamlin. Not me. She  _ hated _ me. More than hated me. Perhaps hate was too weak a word for what she felt for me. I had to remind myself of that fact constantly even as it drove knives under my skin.

If an eternity in the Spring Court was what she wanted, then I would let her have it. Cauldron knew I had done enough to fuck up her life. Dragging her to the Night Court for pointless visitations that would guarantee she hated me more, even if it meant gaining a valuable edge in what I knew was coming, would not help her.

And all I wanted was to help her. For my mate, I would yield to this nightly poison if it meant her happiness.

And yet...

Here she sat night after night. Alone. In the dark waiting for something to answer her. It was the only time I wavered. It was the only time I questioned my decision.

But unless she asked the question, unless she made the choice and called my name, I’d leave her be. This was her peace and she’d earned it.

However much I hated every single second of it and denied my loathing in the process, I had become such a coward. A  _ monster _ .

Feyre’s noting of the pain lacing her palms dragged my attention back to her. I saw her fists unfurl revealing the sleek eye I had etched upon her left hand. She felt calmer now, more recovered from the incident that had transpired tonight. But her scowl at the tattoo and subsequent abhorrence flooding through her was dismissal enough.

And I knew those feelings all too well to ignore them.

Together, we stood. Together, we left our bathing chambers.

Separately, we returned to our own private worlds - she in hers and me in mine.

I had two weeks until I lost her, and likely the future of my court, forever.

The smooth ceiling of my room shimmered faintly in the early morning light as it poured in through the open windows of my room. Snow from the rooftops nearby reflected an extra layer of sheen to the light that would have been somehow dimmer any other time of year.

Though I hated having my wings pinned down, I rested comfortably on my back preferring to have them out and suffocated than stuffed inside myself, a further reminder of my previous imprisonment.

It was rare that a day went by in which I did not fly somewhere. Most nights I couldn’t sleep and so the stars wove together to form a cradle for me instead. I had missed it, that feeling of open air and crisp cool wind that burned my skin and lungs so badly the pain became a pleasure. Not even on the rare occasions Amarantha let me out of my cells of dirt and stone did I dare attempt flying. Anyone could see. Anyone might mark me for it and use it against me later on.

I knew she knew. She had to have known about my wings. She couldn’t not know after the weeks she’d spent with them pinned to the walls during the war torturing me for information. Yet it was the one part of myself she seemed to have forgotten or else casually chose to ignore while I was Under the Mountain.

_ There is one person who saw your wings in that court. You showed them to her when she cleaned your room... _

I shuddered with a groan, the sheets beneath me feeling stale.

_ The Mountain. _

I had to stop drowning in thoughts of it. It was too masochistic when this day already brought enough pain for me to harvest for the remainder of many winters yet to come.

Yet here I was lying wide awake in bed, my fingers tracing circles over themselves as I stared at the blank expanse of ceiling that mimicked the future I would enter into by the end of the day.

War was coming.

For three months since I’d earned my freedom and come home, my mind had been torn in two with one half dedicated to this repeated thought.

War was coming.

And the only way I could see to stop it was... just out of my reach. Barely any time into my reign as High Lord and already, I was going to fail my court miserably. Fifty years of service in those gods forsaken caves would be wiped out, forgotten among the pages of history the second Hybern figured out the key to rebuilding that damned pot that would unmake us all. I supposed if he succeeded, my lone consolation would be that all of history would be forgotten alongside whatever shitty contributions I had failed to make in a feeble attempt to go down on the side of good.

Dread knotted into the muscle fibers banding around my stomach and I didn’t know if the sentiment was mine or  _ hers _ \- the other half of my pounding thoughts. Maybe it was ours both.

She’d thought my name last night, only hours ago. Not only thought it, but said it.

_ Then you don’t know Rhysand very well at all _ .

The words had floated casually into my mind in a sea of emptiness I’d blocked out most of the day, startling me into pleasant surprise.

She  _ never _ thought my name unless she could help it. The only time her mind dared to wander down that dark and drunken alleyway was in the middle of her nightmares, when she’d stare at that eye tattooed upon her skin and curse my name for it.

A curse. That’s all it meant to her. A cauldron damned curse.

Which was why it shocked me so thoroughly to  _ feel _ it spoken off her lips, the bond opening like a chasm deep and wide for that brief moment to let me in.

_...Rhysand... _

She had so little control over her mind. There were times it was wide open and I flipped her thoughts over as one would the pages of a book, easily taking my time to peruse as I saw fit, something I preferred not to do if I could help it.

There were other times that it was closed. When she was so distracted by how bored or idle she was that ironically her mind felt it had nothing better to do than shut against me, entirely unaware of what she was doing.

But last night, she’d spoken my name. Spoken it and cringed even as she showed me through her vision those around her doing the same, including Ianthe, that frigid High Priestess better suited to a brothel than a temple altar.

Reflexively, I stretched my fingers wide allowing the stretch to pull the curse out of me. I had no love for Ianthe and her schemes, but it shamed me all the same to condemn her to the same names I had resorted to for the sake of my court.

_ Whore _ .

Perhaps that was what my mate called me in her mind when she tried not to think my name. She certainly hated me enough to use it. Everyone else did. My name was sure to be a curse inside her mind, one she would spend the rest of her life avoiding, already did avoid every time she stared at her tattoo and prayed I had forgotten her with such loathing and desperation, I sometimes forgot my place and plummeted straight out of the sky.

I avoided her name too. Avoided it like the plague. It was a reminder of what I could not have even if I was prepared to sit by for an eternity and watch her myself through the bond she thought was nothing more than dark blue ink on her arm and a broken bone I’d once mended.

Most days, I succeeded at keeping her out save for those moments her emotion become so strong she was practically at my side screaming at me. The only time I couldn’t seem to avoid it entirely was when -

A knock rapped curtly at my bedroom door. My eyes flickered close with a deep sigh. Speak of the devil, I should have known this would be coming.

“Come in, Morrigan,” I said, not bothering to sit up in greeting as my cousin walked briskly into my bedroom. “As if you needed an invitation.” My voice did not come out pleasantly.

“Good morning to you too,” she said with a small frown. “I’ll try not be too hurt by your underwhelming reaction to seeing me.”

She plopped herself down on my bed lying next to me, her arms tucked behind her head teaming with long golden locks that grew brighter in the increasing sunlight streaming in from outside. She had on a pair of dark leggings and a deep blue blouse, a color that suited her well.

I turned my head enough to look at her and spoke plainly.

“I told you weeks ago not to check in on me anymore.”

She pulled one hand down to examine her well manicured nails and flicked them off without a word.

“Morrigan.”

“When are you going to stop pretending that everything is fine? I’m not an idiot. I know what day this is.”

“Everyone in Prythian knows what day this.”

“Not everyone, including Cassian, whom you stormed out of training with yesterday after insisting you were  _ fine _ when he asked you why you want to get shit faced tonight for no apparent reason.”

She lifted her brows daring me to deny it. I shrugged. “I see no reason why it’s any business of his - or  _ yours _ for that matter - if I want to get drunk with my friends for the hell of it.”

“For her, you mean. For Feyre.”

_ Feyre. _

And there it was. Morrigan was the one constant in my life capable of always dragging the truth out of me. She didn’t even need the aid of her magnificent gifts or charm to do it. Sheer will and nagging were enough alone.

“And I think you mean friend, singular, not friends, seeing as how no one else was invited to your little escapade tonight.”

I snorted and a ghost of a smile almost graced my face. “I suppose that’s why you’re here now, is it? To tell me how much you long to take care of two sick puking Illyrian males for the evening. And you can spare me the trouble of trying to convince me Azriel actually wants to be there for that.”

My brother would sooner have dinner alone with Amren than turn up to watch me become a morose drunk. Azriel spent his life among the shadows. He didn’t need to deal with my self-indulgent pity party on top of that.

“Azriel can take care of himself anywhere, as you damn well know,” Morrigan said, her eyes hard as steel, ever ready to defend her preferred Illyrian. “And he’d be there in a heartbeat,” she drummed her fingers on my chest for emphasis, “if you asked him and you know it. As I would too.”

I sighed, but didn’t say anything, my attention returned to that blank, blank ceiling above us.

Because of course she was right. That’s what was so annoyingly perfect about her and why we had all clung to her like honey for the better part of near on six hundred years.

“Rhys,” Morrigan said, propping herself up on one elbow, her voice softening. “It’s not too late, you know. She doesn’t marry him until sundown.” I didn’t have to ask who she’d spoken to for that intimate piece of information. “You could go and get her.”

“And say what, precisely? ‘Remember me? The man who got you drunk for three months, tortured you, taunted you, and pushed you into a bargain you didn’t want when I could have just been  _ nice _ and saved you without asking anything in return? We’re mates and I’d love it if you didn’t marry the High Lord of Spring that you risked everything for. How does that sound?’“

Morrigan pursed her lips and bobbed her head a bit considering. “That’s an... i _ nteresting _ way to do it, but you might find a more subtle approach to yield better results.”

“Your suggestion, oh Queen of my wretched court?”

Mor smirked like a tiger. She liked that one and it seemed to put the next idea in mind.

“Why don’t you try starting with ‘Hello, Feyre darling.’ Someone once told me that one garners quite the reaction out of her.”

“Why do I tell you these things,” I said shaking my head. “You are impossible.” Morrigan laughed.

“So are you. Must run in the family.”

I was too miserable to return the laugh.

“Sundown.”

“Sundown,” she confirmed even though I already knew that detail, had been given every detail of this weeding right down to the lace design of the doilies they would set the tea kettles on. Azriel had given me all of that and more.

She would marry at sundown, when I’d go find Cassian and likely watch Feyre marry herself away, taking the easiest, albeit still perilous, path towards stopping an impending war away from my court along with my mate. In my drunken state warping the barriers of my mind, I’d likely see everything as it happened and hopefully forget it all by morning.

The Cauldron was cruel.

Perhaps a night of obnoxious drinking with my brother wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Sunlight filtered the room in full force now. Morning was here which gave me a long time to decide how much revelry I would be up for come nightfall.

“Morrigan.”

“Yes, Rhys,” my cousin replied thoughtfully.

“What are you doing today?”

“Hmm,” she said, a little hum in her throat. Her hips gave a scoot on the bed knocking into mine teasingly. “Hanging out with your sorry ass, I’d imagine.”

If only Feyre was never this alone. She might be here already.

Despite how much I liked to complain about my dear cousin, having Morrigan around for the day was more comfort than I cared to admit.

The only one who knew. The only one I’d told. Not even Amren knew everything that had transpired under that rock of dirt that cut Prythian in half.

By now, my inner circle knew strictly the facts. Feyre was a mortal who had willingly come into the lion’s den and offered herself already dripping in blood and bait to save Tamlin and break the curse on our world. After defeating three brutal tasks to free the fae she had grown up despising, she solved Amarantha’s riddle only to be killed at the fae queen’s hands anyway and wind up miraculously remade into one of our own. A High Fae lady among us with the spark of seven High Lords in her blood where once a human huntress had been.

And that was where the knowledge stopped. No one knew who she was to me. No one knew how deep the bargain on her tattooed hand now ran. No one knew what torment those three months had wrought on her still human heart, the one keeping her sane despite what she thought.

_ Feyre Cursebreaker _ was whispered throughout Prythian. Even the fae of Velaris, my own sanctuary I had struggled for centuries to keep hidden from the world, spoke of her. Their savior, she was hailed and rightfully so.

But never their Lady. Never  _ their _ queen. And certainly never my mate.

I knew the second I saw Morrigan waiting for me on that balcony when I came home that I would keep it all locked away from them. I told Morrigan because I had to. I had to tell someone and she just happened to be there for me, the right person when I’d needed her. Had it been anyone else...

The relief at seeing her was... overwhelming, to say the least.

The words fell out of my mouth in droves I couldn’t contain. We didn’t move until I’d spat the entire story out at her, her eyes grown wide from shock as she watched me fall apart. I hadn’t even given her time to embrace me before I was gasping  _ She’s my mate, my mate, my mate - she’s my mate _ at her over and over again and she had no idea who I was even referencing.

The last time I’d seen my cousin, I’d been dressed in my finest mask, the essence of power and might and all that I ever was and I’d returned home to her a mess. She had pleaded to go with me, had said I needed someone at my side that night to keep me from ripping my hair out all evening. I’d almost let her come. I would have been utterly fucked if I had.

And I vowed never to let the others see it. The second my story was done and I let Morrigan winnow us home to Velaris, I felt a hole inside of me close for none to pass through. Close, but a gaping pit remained beneath it waiting for the stitches holding it shut to burst open.

I wouldn’t let it.

We spent most of this day in quiet silence, content to remain at the townhouse for most of the morning before taking to the streets of Velaris and breathing in the fresh air. We walked for hours, never saying more than was necessary. Her presence was enough.

Occasionally, Morrigan would touch my wrist or squeeze my shoulder, but she never pried. Not once.

Not until we came home and stood on the rooftop watching the sun begin its descent towards the tips of the horizon. It was nice to stop and be idle for once. A day of walking had wormed a sick, nauseated feeling into my gut that was becoming harder and harder to ignore the longer we went.

“Cassian will be here soon,” I said. I stood stiffly with my feet apart and arms crossed over my chest.

“Is that a dismissal?” Morrigan said with little inflection. Stay or go, she would accept my request.

“It’s never a dismissal. You know that.”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder and smirked up at me. “I’ll try to remember that the next time we bicker over dinner or you get invited to a big party in someone else’s court.”

“That’s your own doing and you know it.”

Morrigan leaned up and kissed my cheek before turning for the door. “Say hello to Cass for me.” Her voice darkened and I felt her grow deadly serious. “He’s worried about you, you know. We all are. Your mask doesn’t fool everyone, Rhys. And this isn’t Amarantha’s court anymore. You needn’t always be so guarded.”

“I’m not so su-”

_ “Feyre?” _

The words died in my throat. The barriers of my mind cracked open like lightning ripping the heavens apart as I saw through her eyes miles and miles away from me.

Tamlin was standing feet from Feyre, his arm outstretched towards it as she struggled in vein to convince her to take his offered hand.

_ Help me, help me, help me _ , she begged - pleaded so pitifully in her mind, her body begging her tongue to make use of the thought and turn it into some kind of action. I saw through her eyes, took advantage of the window she’d opened for me and surveyed the scene.

High Fae - hundreds of them - sat around her gawking whilst red rose petals that Feyre couldn’t stop staring at screamed at her from every corner.

Blood boiled in my veins. Darkness spilled out of me like waves on a turbulent night sea. I couldn’t see it through the fog I traveled within between our minds, but I could damn well feel it.

The bastards. The _fucking_ _bastards_ had recreated her damned trials all over again.

With Feyre, I saw them the way she did. This was not an assembly of Prythian’s finest turned out to celebrate a blessed union  _ with _ her. This was a human standing in a pit of mud and bone and grime while those same people pretending to be her friends now stood around the perimeter of her cage and watched her fight a creature from the bowels of hell itself that she could never hope to kill. This was a girl who had no education, had never learned to read standing before a riddle she could not decipher while her only friend cried out behind her and these fools applauded feet above her head. This was the girl who had stained her soul with blood and death for the sake of the man she loved and earned only the cruel snap of her neck in return.

_ Save me - please, save me. Get me out. End this. _

This was Under the Mountain all over again. Feyre was relieving it in the full light of day, but this time, the mask was pulled off and she was forced to see it as a blessing.

But her happiness, her happy ending... no one moved to help her and the solution sat there dangling before my eyes and I couldn’t move even as my heart tore itself to shreds watching her panic rise to a breaking point. I couldn’t take her future away from her, not unless she -

_ No. _

Tamlin stepped forward and Feyre recoiled.  _ No - no. _

That was all I needed. That one little word. That was all I had  _ ever _ needed.

I made my decision. Tamlin might be content to sit idly by and not do anything, but I would not. I would never keep quiet any longer. I would never - could never - let her suffer an eternity like this. I was shamed for how long I’d already let it go on.

“Rhys?”

Morrigan’s voice became a dull, distant memory in my mind as I winnowed on the spot. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Velaris had been plunged into darkness and storm with the rage that flew off me and swirled itself into thunderous applause as I landed in a cloud of smoke and shadow in the middle of the Spring Court. Starlight flecked the dust around me and when it settled, I stepped out of it giving a brisk shirk to the lapels of my jacket, now formal and elegant compared to the casual tunic I’d worn most of the day.

I had no idea of the chaos erupting around me. I spared the guests no thought as my eyes plucked over them one by one like the strings on a violin looking for her.

And then, there she was. Standing mere feet away from me.

And she was absolutely horrified at my appearance, but I didn’t care. Seeing her there standing in that dress that drowned her out and stole her voice, I felt a flicker of happiness for the first time in  _ months _ .

My mask - that cruel mask of the wicked High Lord of Night hated and despised by all - was fitted tightly around me once more, but after fifty years of wearing it and three months of struggling to remember who I was without it, it felt like a comfort, a road I knew how to navigate that would get me... somewhere. Anywhere that was closer to her.

I looked at Feyre dead in the eye and the words sprang immediately to my lips in a rich, soothing purr that felt immediately familiar.

“Hello, Feyre darling.”

All around me, everyone screamed.


	2. I Dare You (Chapter 5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 of ACOMAF from Rhys's POV in which he rescues Feyre from her wedding and brings her to the Night Court for the first time.

The sentries moved at once, all of them braced in a half step forward with their hands poised at the glimmering hilts resting on their hips, the beginnings of the silver blades beneath just beginning to show. Tamlin and Lucien took up the front, a delightful mixture of outrage and confusion I’d never tire of seeing muddling on their faces.

They wanted to attack. They wanted to attack so damned badly, I could  _ smell _ it on them. Feyre likely did too even if she hadn’t honed her senses well enough yet to figure it out.

So much male aggression and it fell entirely flat against the Illyrian towering in their midst.

So much magic... and it felt like a shallow ripple above their lovely little lakes, delicate and dainty against the surge of venom hissing in my veins.

I held a single hand up and marked Ianthe, the only one with any sense among them, backing down.

“What a pretty little wedding,” I mocked, the taunting persona coming back to me with ease. Tamlin and his sentries froze and I felt Feyre go still with dread beside me.

I pressed my hands deep into my pockets and contentedly turned to Feyre when the guards didn’t dare move.

They’d been there. They’d seen me Under the Mountain. Lucien especially. I’d held his mind without so much as clicking my fingers at him. They wouldn’t dare move against me until I allowed them the courtesy and they knew it.

And Feyre.

Feyre standing there in a dress that positively drowned her out, the layers of tulle and gosselin piling up until every ounce of skin had disappeared save her face.

And then there were the gloves, lurking over her skin just up to the elbows where the lone mark - the lone trace of  _ other _ lingered. Naturally, they’d seen fit to cover it up and Feyre had... let them do it.

Out of spite, I clucked my tongue disapprovingly at it and felt Feyre stiffen.

“Get the hell out,” Tamlin growled. His claws snapped out of his hands revealing the beast within.

Of course his instincts inclined him towards violence as the most natural answer for dealing with the situation. He hadn’t learned anything in fifty years, not in fifty lifetimes.

In all the time that he’d known me - the most powerful High Lord to be born, heir to the Night Court, an assumed vicious and monstrous territory, and an  _ Illyrian _ to top it off - never had he seen me as the savage he thought I was. All of my moves were made in carefully crafted words and twice concealed actions. If Tamlin hadn’t seen that by now, hadn’t seen me shudder away from the wings and talons and animalistic forms that came out so naturally in him, than he was a damned shade more foolish than I’d hoped.

And yet still his first instinct in anger was to shift, attack. Ever born from noble causes, still, he would have made a reckless trainee unable to survive the Blood Rite if he’d been born in the cold peaks of my homeland.

And here Feyre lived in the midst of his pathways daily.

I sent a reminder of that stupidity with another click of my tongue. “Oh, I don’t think so. Not when I need to call in my bargain with Feyre darling.”

No way in seven hells was I leaving her with  _ this _ for life’s great answer to love. I’d been a fool not to have seen it sooner.

And yet, her stomach physically recoiled at my demand, the bond breaking her so open I could feel the clench of her insides against me. I was too livid to bother caring how much she loathed me, just so long as I could get her out when the evidence of her suffering was written all over her from head to toe, mind to mind.

I’d deal with my own issues later. Feyre first.

“You try to break the bargain,” I said in reply to her silent objection, “and you know what will happen.” The guests began disappearing, some of them winnowing on the spot while others merely clawed tooth and nail over their chairs to scamper off. I wanted to laugh at them, how easily they bought my lies. They did half the job for me.

Feyre for her part remained rooted to the spot, but her arms shook - terribly so.

“I gave you three months of freedom. You could at least look happy to see me.”

I said it just for her, low and injected with enough mockery that she could have... assessed it for some of our previous banter had she... had she wanted to.

All Feyre did in response was shake further. No flicker of rebuttal. No words to hurl at me. No fight left in her at all. The lowest blow she could have laid at my feet.

Shoving the groan building in my chest aside before it could grapple too aggressively with the wrath that seethed, I turned towards Tamlin.

“I’ll be taking her now,” I said, a statement, not a request.

“Don’t you dare,” he snarled.

“Was I interrupting? I thought it was over.”

And as I savored the look of Tamlin all alone up on that dais, his sentries gone and Ianthe escaped, no one but Lucien to call help, I suddenly found myself temporarily back in Amarantha’s hall the first night I’d brought Feyre out and he’d seen the tattoo glinting on her arm, a mark of the bond forged between us that neither of them understood.

I’d felt a glory then in taunting him. And I felt it now all over again tenfold.

The smile that dripped off my lips as I looked back at Feyre was unprecedented, full of the venom and majesty I allowed to fill my court.

And maybe it was cruel, in that moment, to... savor it so much. To relish the joys of being the masked madman they all deigned to fear if it meant that I understood Feyre more than they ever could. She would have said no. She would have objected and they would have forced her up on that dais anyway until the wrong words came out of her lips and likely made her believe it was her choice in the end.

She was just as misunderstood as I was.

“At least,” I concluded, “Feyre seemed to think so.”

“Let us finish the ceremony-”

“Your High Priestess seems to think it’s over too.”

I didn’t have to look at Tamlin to see him still. In the silence that poured momentarily over us, I heard the tiny scratching of his claws retreating.

“Rhysand-”

Civil at last. And here it was his wedding day. I should have hated to see how long it took to tame the damned beast on his deathbed.

“I’m in no mood to bargain,” I said, cutting him off, “even though I could work it to my advantage, I’m sure.” I tugged along Feyre’s elbow not entirely kindly and she jolted. I tried to tell myself it was from not expecting the gesture than from my touch itself. “Let’s go.”

And cauldron damn me into the earth until I died, I had half a hope that she would acquiesce. That she would go willingly - begrudgingly, of course. But that she would accept a way out even if it was the least of what she would have chosen to do.

But she didn’t move. She didn’t accept me or fight me. Still, she chose  _ him _ .

“Tamlin,” she said and instantly, her beloved moved, finally desperate enough to take a single step.

_ How long did it take you to move before her neck snapped... _

“Name your price,” Tamlin said.

“Don’t bother,” I crooned, sliding my arm around Feyre’s with merriment I didn’t feel as she again recoiled from me.

Her mind raged with anxiety.

_ The Night Court _ .

Scenes of Under the Mountain played out to an unimaginable extreme filtered into her head and though I could understand the sentiment given the fury she’d endured from Amarantha under the guise of my court, it was rather outlandish.

And I hated it.

“Tamlin, please,” she said.

“Such dramatics,” I replied lingering on her open, gaping thoughts. I pulled her closer waiting for the final offer, but...

And finally, those hands of Spring that Tamlin bore were pure and whole, the beast done away with, though not gone; only caged.

“If you hurt her-”

“I know, I know. I’ll return her in a week.”

How utterly boring. Even if no one else seemed to think so.

At last, I slipped my arms around Feyre’s waist and holding her in close to me, whispered at her ear, “Hold on.”

And as we winnowed, I finally allowed myself to realize some of my own sorrow at how dejected she felt clinging to me for a safety she didn’t feel in my arms, how hated and despised I was that even giving her the perfect scapegoat for her refusal at the altar, she wanted nothing more than to push our bodies away and plummet into the void of wind and shadow through which we flew.

We landed, not in Velaris where my secrets slumbered, but in my palace estate high in the snow capped mountains of my court. The darkness lifted and Feyre blinked up at me and then... and then...

There was starlight. Glittering, glimmering, shining everywhere for her to see. It reflected off every surface from the moonstone columns that built the infrastructure to the celestial swirl of colors built in to the fabrics shading the open scene. A hint of jasmine wafted between the currents of air cascading over the room.

And just as when I’d met her on Calanmai and she’d first seen me, a single thought sprang immediately to her mind:

_ The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. _

The softest reassurance she could unknowingly give.

I set her down gently and murmured, “Welcome to the Night Court.”

* * *

It took her a while.

I don’t think she realized it.

For several long moments after I’d backed away, she just stood there taking it all in. A part of me stood back in a self-satisfied manner. My court  _ was _ glorious and in that moment, however brief, however small a glimpse of this home she received, Feyre saw that glory and delighted in it against her better judgement.

I took in the scent of jasmine with her, letting it calm the heaviness in my soul as I stared at Feyre. Against the stark white of her dress, the bold depth of reds and blues hanging from the gossamer curtains seemed to reflect against her. The lantern lights added a warm glow to the open, airy space that tilted slightly towards her in the wind, welcoming her.

To come.

To stay.

Shit - she was  _ here _ . Feyre was here  _ in the Night Court _ .

In my court. In my kingdom, and she was feeling the majesty of my lands imbue her with the sort of awe and wonder I only ever dared dream for her to have.

And still her ears were filled with imaginary screams she anticipated to hear at any moment.

“This is my private residence,” I said finally, just to break the silence and calm the fears lingering about her startled eyes.

Her attention turned carefully towards me and took in my appearance, noted the changes my body had made in complexion just as I took her in properly for the first time in months.

No indication one way or the other as to whether my darkened skin attracted her or not, she at least seemed... pleased to see me in one piece.

Enough that it brought the smirk back to my face, and promptly snapped the facade on us both that we’d found in those first few blissful moments of arrival.

“How  _ dare _ you-”

I cut her off with a snort. It was too wonderful, too hilariously familiar how fast we sunk back into our rhythm from the start.

“I certainly missed  _ that _ look on your face.” Stepping nearer again, my focus narrowed in on her. “You’re welcome, you know.”

She looked absolutely scandalized that I would even imply it.

“For  _ what?” _

“For saving you when you asked.”

“I didn’t ask for anything.”

As fast as the peace had found me, it left, amble and quick, carried away by the wicked wind licking about us. The venom leftover in my blood from the Spring Court  _ hissed _ .

No, Feyre hadn’t asked for anything.

Oh, she had begged for freedom of her Tamlin, of Lucien, of Ianthe. Even if freedom should never have been obligated to be an answer to a question in the first place. But of those three, she had asked the world and received nothing.

But of  _ me _ she would go down to her death denying she had asked anything even when I would offer her everything.

The pure frustration of being so misconstrued that my mate should not only shy away from my advances just to help her _live_ again regardless of who and what we were to each other but also deny that she had even shouted into that void of desperation at all, was an assault so vicious against my heart that my body rallied as the temper engulfed my mind.

My hand shot out and Feyre’s body went rigid beneath my touch, her eyes wide as the moon on the fullest night.

Snarling with what little control I had left, suddenly exhausted by the facade I’d relished only minutes ago, I ripped the gloves right off her and felt her flinch as I held her tattooed palm in my hand, caressed the eye I’d left there to watch over her.

“I heard you begging, someone,  _ anyone _ , to rescue you, to get you out. I heard you say  _ no _ .”

“I didn’t say anything,” Feyre insisted and again, it was an effort not to rage.

Not at her. But with her. With her against all the backwards misconceptions she’d been given.

To think that Tamlin had let her sit by for three months broken and beaten and left to assume help would never come, so why bother asking? Why bother trying? To the point that she couldn’t even accept it nor see it when it stared her plainly in the face for the sake of social facades...

Cauldron damn me if I didn’t throw centuries of diplomacy and careful training out the window to go back south and rip that beast to tatters for damning her so.

Turning that eye up to stare blatantly at the pair of us, I tapped the pupil aggressively and insisted, “I heard it loud and clear.”

Feyre tore her hand away, her own rage seeping into her skin. I would never get used to her recoiling from me. “Take me back.  _ Now _ . I didn’t want to be stolen away.”

The truth.

She wanted out, just not to be here.

At least, here she was safe. But she would hate me for it. Always, always she would curse my name for stealing her. Always, always I would hate she had learned herself as a prize to be stolen.

I shrugged. “What better time to take you here? Maybe Tamlin didn’t notice you were about to reject him in front of his entire court - maybe you can now simply blame it on me.”

If Feyre wanted a scapegoat, so be it. I would mold myself into whatever she needed even if it tore us apart, made my blood pull tightly in my veins and my muscles scream for the skies.

“You’re a bastard. You made it clear enough that I had... reservations.”

“Such gratitude, as always.”

Feyre drew breath and her body trembled with the effort as she stared me down so defiantly even in her exhaustion to defend her choices. “What do you want from me?”

“ _ Want?” _ The word snapped from my tongue like a reproach in the Illyrian camps for disobedience. Any minute now, I would feel the lashings against my back. And then I earned my sentence with the words toppling out of me in a rolling current. Control was an idea long since lost on me today.

“I want you to say thank you, first of all. Then I want you to take off that hideous dress. You look...” Disgusting, I wanted to say, as I eyed her up and down. A lamb sent to the slaughter. “You look exactly like the doe-eyed damsel he and that simpering priestess want you to be.”

“You don’t know anything about me. Or us.”

_ Mother above, help me _ .

Tightly, I smiled, some small semblance of the mask left between our crumbling facade. “Does Tamlin? Does he ever ask you why you hurl your guts up every night, or why you can’t go into certain rooms or see certain colors?”

Feyre went positively still as knife after knife came hurtling off my tongue.

I did not care that I hurt her. I cared too much that I hurt her. I was vile and vicious and cruel and all the things she expected me to be, so I let myself be them to see if it would wring the truth out of her. I already suffered for how I had failed to her this point.

_ Cauldron, let me suffer again. _

“Get the hell out of my head,” Feyre barked at me, thinking of her Tamlin and how I ought to leave him be.

Always, she would think of him. Never would she give her heart - her love, her every first thought - to me. Her own mate...

“Likewise,” I said, backing away. Stay out of her head. Stay out of  _ my _ head. Stay out of my heart for all it’s killing me.

And suddenly, it was all just too much. Too, too much.

Her being here. Having her so close and knowing she was still so far. Knowing she would never willingly choose this life, would never think my Court safe.

That my mate was my enemy. Worse yet - the  _ lover _ of my enemy. We were, perhaps, a match more ill fitting than the Cauldron had seen fit to design.

My father would have laughed.

My mind collapsed.

“You think I enjoy being awoken every night by visions of you puking? You send everything right down that bond, and I don’t appreciate having a front-row seat when I’m trying to sleep.”

Another nail in the coffin as Feyre spat “Prick” at me and rightfully so, I was earning it, twisting on my heels in retreat with a near cackle, growing maddeningly drunk on the horror this had become. How far we’d fallen when we should have never jumped to begin with...

I was done. I needed out. Needed to  _ breathe _ again that salvation of the skies.

Having Feyre here, i thought it would be a mercy and in some ways it was knowing I was guaranteed at least one more week of her alive because I knew she’d be cared for.

But it hurt just as much, to see her in that dress, to feel her so close and know that our souls couldn’t be farther apart even with the bond - the bargain, whatever the fuck it’d been distorted into.

“As for what else I want from you... I’ll tell you tomorrow at breakfast. For now, clean yourself up. Rest.” I eyed that monstrosity of a dress she wore, felt herself flush from the stare I pierced her with, and took my direction as much for myself as for her. “Take the stairs on the right, one level down. Your room is the first door.”

I edged around for the door, but there was one last nail to hammer into my deathbed before Feyre would let me go.

“Not a dungeon cell?”

Would there ever come a day she saw my Court as something other than the ghastly vision she saw of it Under the Mountain?

I couldn’t even fully face her to give her an answer.

“You are not a prisoner, Feyre. You made a bargain, and I am calling it in. You will be my guest here, with the privileges of a member of my household. None of my subjects are going to touch you, hurt you, or so much as think ill of you here.”

Something in that open room emptied out then. For all that the space was light, was relaxed, was  _ void _ , an awful pressure filled Feyre’s chest and caved in on us both as she approached her next question, a sense of dread and panic filling her to the brim.

And I understood.

In all my arrogant anger... I understood.

“And where might those subjects be?”

“Some dwell here - in the mountain beneath us. They’re forbidden to set foot in this residence. They know they’d be signing their death warrant.” With painstaking focus, I forced the anger to the back of my mind and met her eyes, so crisp and clear as the blue bit through the grey fog to see me and know that she was safe in my care.

_ Feyre. _

“Amarantha wasn’t very creative. My court beneath this mountain has long been feared, and she chose to replicate it by violating the space of Prythian’s sacred mountain. So, yes: there’s a court beneath this mountain - the court your Tamlin now expects me to be subjecting you to. I preside over it every now and then, but it mostly rules itself.”

“When-” and she stumbled on the word, trying to shove those horrifying images out of her mind as they rattled through the weariness in her bones. “When are you taking me there?”

She looked so tired. So starved for some semblance of truth to see the light by. The ache in my core that cursed and praised the anger as one quieted into a darkness as I looked at her.

_ Feyre. Oh, darling. My - _

“I’m not,” I said, rolling the thoughts off my shoulders. “This is my home, and the court beneath it is my... occupation, as you mortals call it. I do not like for the two to overlap very often.”

Feyre’s brows rose surprised. “‘You mortals’?”

I felt a light glimmer along my skin, the eye of the storm perhaps, we’d reached.

She was so innocent still, even of her own Making.

“Should I consider you something different?”

For a brief moment, I saw the consideration dance behind her eyes, take my challenge in and breathe it right back out. Coming to terms with her own fae existence - a debate for another day.

Still, my lips gave a tug and Feyre scowled as she deflected, “And the other denizens of your court?”

“Scattered throughout, dwelling as they wish. Just as  _ you _ are now free to roam where you wish.”

“I wish to roam home.”

I laughed and finally deigned to leave her, though still my body made instinctively for the open veranda that sat beneath the stars where it might recuperate while Feyre left. “I’m willing to accept your thanks at any time, you know,” I called over my shoulder.

A shooting star blinked through the space behind me between where Feyre and I stood, the bond between us going taut with steely rage that boiled and burned. A shock of pain crashed into the back of my skull that I immediately gripped and whirled to find Feyre... and the shoe she’d struck my head with lying at my feet, her other already in her hand gripped tightly.

It took me so aback, so off guard... I’d never expected it, and yet, here we were. I felt us both slip out of the eye of that storm and back into the belly of the beast.

I was the High Lord of the Night Court. If Cassian could have seen this, I didn’t even want to think of it -

_ “I dare you,” _ I snarled, lips quivering over my teeth, partly just to see what she would do.

Feyre through the shoe as hard as she could - harder, I dared imagine, than she had the first and it pissed me off to no extent. I snatched it straight out of the air and as I lowered my hand from my face, I met Feyre’s eyes with determination to see this through to the end. The shoe shriveled into a black ash that fell from my hand now thrumming with power, carried away in bits and pieces of dust on the wind.

I looked Feyre over. No trace of her own power. No trace of anything  _ more _ than her fae senses. No trace of the talons I sometimes glimpsed in her waking nightmares or anything... or anything else I suspected she might have.

Just pure hatred and venom in one powerful throw.

And yet.

And yet...

I felt her presence fill the open space like a mighty wind ripping through a canyon. Somehow, I had to find a way to wake her up.

An impossible task if this continued.

“Interesting,” I said.

And that was it. I left her and she left me, making for her new chambers for the week. I just heard her opening her door when -

“So,  _ that _ went well.”

Even I had not anticipated the snarl that rang viciously out of my throat as my cousin spoke in that delighted way of hers. Morrigan, for her part, did not look entirely appalled, although always she would be irritated.

Naturally, she’d seen fit to follow me here from Velaris after my trip through Tamlin’s springtime festivities.

“She’s got some bite in her,” Mor said. “You two deserve each other.”

“It’s not funny,” I spat.

Mor’s lips twitched. “It’s a little funny and you deserve it for how much you push and poke at her, though I can’t say I don’t blame you given the circumstances. You’ve always been something of a jackass at the best of times.”

“You should be working.”

“And miss the show?” Mor made an indignant  _ pft! _ noise with a dismissive hand gesture. “Not a chance. I wanted to catch a glimpse of my new sister-in-law and I am not disappointed by any means if that little display between you was anything to go by-”

_ “She’s not mine and she’s not your anything!” _

Morrigan opened her mouth to say something further and I merely... retreated, until my back hit the balcony railing and my hands went to my knees. A sick, nauseated feeling sank into my gut.

I couldn’t even try to hide it anymore, the physical and mental reactions this woman wrought on me. Feyre was simply inescapable.

My vision blurring slightly, Mor took a wary step towards me and I shook her off.

Feyre explored her room with that blasted bond still a wide open chasm between us. With each new feature she found, sorrow rose with the awe, depression swallowed her with the inspiration. She hated and loved it at the same time and all she wanted was to go, as far away as she could because though the palace was lovely,  _ I _ was not.

My mate found me disgusting - a hollow shell encased in beautiful adornments and nothing more.

I was  _ empty _ to her. Empty to my mate.

A gasp heaved out of me just before my knees smashed cracks into the marble floor, as I realized the full weight of what I’d done to her, not just in bringing her here, but in everything I’d ever done. Morrigan moved at once.

“Oh, Rhys,” she said, her voice no longer bright and amused, but grown soft and warm, the one that could make my Commander stand down at the worst fight and my Shadowsinger find peace without shadows on the rainiest, darkest day.

But her skin was not the skin I wanted to feel. Her voice was not the one I wanted to hear. She was not my mate, though I was glad she was here all the same.

I needed her. The only one who saw it all.

“She hates me,” I breathed.

“She does not,” came my cousin’s adamant reply.

“Yes, she does. Don’t deny it. She hates me and she’s dying. My mate is suffering a fate worse than death and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Mor was quiet for a long moment, the gears in her head turning before she sighed and gave my arm a squeeze. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way to get her back. Get  _ Feyre _ back. We’ve all been to the brink at some point or another and had to claw our way back. This time will be no different.”

“Stay” I said as I shook on the marble floor, darkness beginning to leak back out of me. “Take the week off from court. Your father can wait and I have enough business to attend to with the rogue war bands and temples without Feyre’s added visit that I could use the extra hand.”

Morrigan nodded and sat herself beside me rubbing circles on my back. She understood.

For all the spirit that poured out of her in constant droves, Morrigan was nothing if not dutiful and compassionate.

It was enough to almost get me through the moment.  _ Almost _ .

When Feyre tore that wedding dress off herself and threw herself into bed, sobs tore at her throat, screamed their way out of her until her pillow was drenched within the darkness as she descended into the depths of the hatred she bore me.

And in the darkness, I cried too.

* * *

The early morning dawn brought a stillness with it that quieted the noise in my head.

I slept with the window shut, lest the darkness leak out of me to excess and disturb whatever visions wandered about outside. Lest Feyre or Morrigan wake to any thrashings I might have and see the worst of me.

Naturally, my first thoughts jumped towards Feyre and brought the buzzing back to the forefront of my mind.

She hadn’t woken from any terrors of her own in the middle of the night, but then again... I sensed she hadn’t slept much to begin with. And I didn’t want to fight anymore, though I was sure it was inevitable to some degree.

The bond between us was still, though I sensed a dull throbbing behind it even in sleep that was sure to follow Feyre when she opened her eyes. She would need help.

Nuala and Cerridwen were already instructed to wake Feyre and attend to any of her needs, so long as she was awake and okay by morning. I’d seen to them last night after Mor carted me off to my rooms and spent half an hour fussing over me. By the time Feyre slipped into her bath and that throbbing I’d felt slightly intensified, I was already dressed and sitting patiently at the breakfast table.

I gave her time to just be, trying my best to stay out of her head. Despite the tension knotting in her skull, she was relatively peaceful. Quiet. It made staying back somewhat easy as I considered what I needed her to do.

And _ how _ I was going to manage it.

She wasn’t going to be thrilled, but if I started small, then maybe... I might stand a chance.

A chance of keeping my court safe. I anchored myself in the truth of my purpose, of why I was here, what I was made to do. The Cauldron had seen fit to instill me with powers vast and fortified for the sake of my court and I would not yield to the temptations or threats that would drive me down.

If I could not have Feyre as my mate, then perhaps at the least I could have her as my ally to keeping my court safe in the storm yet to come. And that started today.

Perhaps the Cauldron had not seen fit to mate us as lovers, but as political acquaintances, equals who might join strength and will to keep a land safe. I’d never deserved a partner in love, not for nearly six centuries. It seemed fitting fate would not fold on its hand to me now.

The flicker of comforting heat from her bath licking deliciously about in her mind finally startled the bridge between us. I felt warm - happy, knowing she felt something similar even if distantly so while she stayed here. The fact that she could still enjoy a simple pleasure, some small gift I could give her, brought amusement to my features.

I leaned back in my chair closing my eyes. My thumb trailed idle circles over my glass on the table as I reached out, careful not to see through her too much.

Just a tug, a simple pull to say  _ good morning _ was all I sent.

Feyre glowered and I felt the heat of the bath rise a little higher through the bond as she sank deeper into the water. Chuckling, I tugged once more.

_ Come find me _ , it seemed to say.

Feyre did not enjoy being sent for. Understandably so, but even as soothing as those moments of self-care were, I also knew I could not let her sink so far down that she drowned in the despair of her thinking either.

Her displeasure rang hollow between us as she dressed and I waited for her at a table laden with food, every dish imaginable for her to choose from. My spread was not normally so lavish, but Feyre would need to eat and I hated that I didn’t know by now what she would prefer.

Outside the open airways and passages, the mountains of my home were capped thickly with crisp, white snow. The morning sun shone off them like glass beaming with light and warmth.

Even as Feyre approached and paused behind me teaming with the impulse to turn back around and crawl anywhere but here, there was something oddly at rest about this morning.

“I’m not a dog to be summoned,” she said by way of greeting.

I took a steadying breath before slowly turning to look at her. We’d see how long this rest would last.

She stood wearing the fashions of my court - a pale peach set of trousers and matching blouse, cut to bear her midriff and ending in gold cuffs. Her fists curled in cold irritation at me as I took her in... and frowned, frowned at how thin she’d grown since I’d seen her. Not even Under the Mountain after weeks of abuse and malnourishment from Amarantha’s wrath had she ever looked so feeble.

There was something oddly comforting and horrifying to see her standing there, looking at home in the colors of my lands as her body threatened to waste away into dust.

Calling her out on it would only have inspired a fight and I was desperate to have some semblance of peace between us, even if it was the shallow flirting I’d shielded us with Under the Mountain. Thus weakly, I spoke, “I didn’t want you to get lost.”

The throb I’d felt earlier pulsed behind her eyes and her gaze crested over the silver tea pot steaming in front of me on the table. She quickly looked away, lest she be tempted.

“I thought it’d always be dark here,” she said, straining.

“We’re one of the three Solar Courts.” I gestured towards the table, unwilling to deny her what she wanted, what she  _ needed _ . Mercifully, she sat. “our nights are far more beautiful, and our sunsets and dawns are exquisite, but we do adhere to the laws of nature.”

“And do the other courts choose not to?”

So much she still had to learn. I was constantly reminding myself.

“The nature of the Seasonal Courts is linked to their High Lords, whose magic and will keeps them in eternal spring, or winter, or fall, or summer. It has always been like that - some sort of strange stagnation. But the Solar Courts - Day, Dawn, and Night - are of a more... symbolic nature. We might be powerful, but even we cannot alter the sun’s path or strength. Tea?“

Feyre dipped her chin with admirable restraint. My heart ached for her that she felt so repulsed here, she would not even take basic nourishment from me with any ounce of emotion.

“But you will find,” I pressed on as I poured her tea, as I served her, “that our nights are more spectacular - so spectacular that some in my territory even awaken at sunset and go to bed at dawn, just to live under the starlight.”

Feyre added milk and I watched her thoughtfully. Question after question spilled out. She was nothing if not inquisitive.

“Why is it so warm in here, when winter is in full blast out there?”

“Magic.”

“Obviously.” The effort of repressing a self-relieving gasp at the first sip of tea was all that momentarily paused her from going on. “But  _ why?” _

“You heat a house in the winter - why shouldn’t I heat this place as well? I’ll admit I don’t know  _ why _ my predecessors built a palace fit for the Summer Court in the middle of a mountain range that’s mildly warm at best, but who am I to question?”

Feyre went quiet, content to just sip her tea and lessen the burden of her headache. I had to bind up every impulse in my body that urged to throw food upon her plate until she found something pleasing to eat as I watched her. At long last, she set her tea aside and chose some fruit from one of the nearest trays and I let out a sigh I hoped she wouldn’t hear.

Breakfast thus far had been... pleasant.

A gentle reprieve from the waves that rocked between us constantly on the best of days. So long as we stuck to facts and principles, these tangible qualities that grounded us to the earth and taught us basic truths, we remained on stable terms with one another.

That peaceful middle ground between us was what gave me enough courage to dare speak again, dare tempt fate that we might bleed with our anger at each other once more.

“You’ve lost weight,” I said, quietly so as not to rattle her.

“You’re prone to digging through my head whenever you please,” she said. “I don’t see why you’re surprised by it.”

I smirked. The comment was not entirely unkind, but the way she stabbed at the piece of melon on her plate warned me enough that she was still up for sending a little fire at me when she wanted.

“Only occasionally will I do that. And I can’t help it if  _ you _ send things down the bond.”

Indeed, she was the source of most of what I saw whether I wanted to or not.

“How does it work - this  _ bond _ that allows you to see into my head?”

Just the way she placed the emphasis on that word -  _ bond _ \- terrified me. Enough that I stalled with a sip from my own teacup.

We were so near and yet so far.

“Think of the bargain‘s bond as a bridge between us - and at either end is a door to our respective minds. A shield. My innate talents allow me to slip through the mental shields of anyone I wish, with or without that bridge - unless they’re very, very strong, or have trained extensively to keep those shields tight. As a human, the gates to your mind were flung open for me to stroll through. As Fae...” I shrugged halfheartedly, not even sure myself of the answer. “Sometimes, you unwittingly have a shield up - sometimes, when emotion seems to be running strong, that shield vanishes. And sometimes, when those shields are open, you might as well be standing at the gates to your mind, shouting thoughts across the bridge to me. Sometimes I hear them; sometimes I don’t.”

Feyre’s hand clenched tightly on her fork. “And how often do you just rifle through my mind when my shields are down?”

So she hadn’t realized just how open and susceptible she’d been to me all these months. She didn’t like how vulnerable it made her either and I didn’t need to read her mind to know it.

Feyre watched me, watched me not just frown, but deflate as the darkness settled between us and I told her the first of these most awful truths we shared.

“When I can’t tell if your nightmares are real threats or imagined. When you’re about to be married and you silently beg anyone to help you. Only when you drop your mental shields and unknowingly blast those things down the bridge. And to answer your question before you ask, yes. Even with your shields up, I could get through them if I wished. You could train, though - learn how to shield against someone like me, even with the bond bridging our minds and my own abilities.”

Quiet agitation rolled through her as she ignored my offer. I didn’t like that I’d have to make her train when she didn’t want to, but lacking this skill could kill her.

“What do you want with me?” she finally asked. “You said you’d tell me. So tell me.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms preparing for the fight sure to come. Our quiet, relaxed morning would be over after this and just as when I’d first deceived myself putting that mask back on at her wedding, I felt a gentle joy bloom in my chest for the match play to come even knowing it may once again send me to the slaughter in the end.

A match play I knew just from looking at Feyre, dressed so wonderful in the fashions of my court that added color to her cheeks and a highlight to her eyes, I could never resist indulging in.

Staring innocently at Feyre, I casually, finally revealed the seeds of my grand schemes.

“For this week? I want you to learn how to read.”


	3. Shove Me Out (Chapter 6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 of ACOMAF from Rhys's POV in which he gives Feyre her first reading lesson and reveals that war is coming to Prythian.

“No, thank you.”

Feyre’s incredulous expression as she gripped her fork with far too much intensity for what breakfast food deserved was enough to rile me into a bit of mockery.

“You’re going to be a High Lord’s wife,” I said casually. “You’ll be expected to maintain your own correspondences, perhaps even give a speech or two. And the Cauldron knows what else he and Ianthe will deem appropriate for you. Make menus for dinner parties, write thank-you letters for all those wedding gifts, embroider sweet phrases on pillows... It’s a necessary skill. And, you know what? Why don’t we throw in shielding while we’re at it. Reading and shielding - fortunately, you can practice them together.”

I could practically feel the steam rolling off of Feyre, her irritation was quite palatable.

This, I could work with. This, I knew.

“They are _both_ necessary skills,” she said, jaw clenching with every word, “but _you_ are not going to teach me.”

Of course I wasn’t. Should I ever have expected any other objection but this?

“What else are you going to do with yourself? Paint? How’s that going these days, Feyre?”

_How do you like it?_

“What the hell does it even matter to you?”

“it serves various purposes of mine, of course.”

“What. Purposes.”

“You’ll have to agree to work with me to find out, I’m afraid.”

The letter sitting on my desk in my study flashed through my mind. I still hadn’t had the nerve to send it since writing it shortly after waking. Feyre was still too unhinged, too much of a wild gamble to take on sending that letter prematurely. If she wasn’t the person I thought she was, I’d have to find another way of infiltrating my neighbors to the deep south.

Feyre nearly asked my own question for me when her fork snapped between her fingers, the prongs jabbing into her skin to draw out a pain I only seemed to agitate in her.

Such a special bond, this mate thing between us, was becoming.

“Interesting,” i said with a chuckle, noting how easily the metal bent around her slender fingers, those fingers I once watched paint to keep myself alive.

“You said that last night.”

“Am I not allowed to say it twice?”

“That’s not what I was implying and you know it.”

Carefully, my eyes slid over her considering and she watched me with a pained, tense regard, waiting for me to render some hidden verdict I must be mulling over.

How much did Feyre know? How much power had she shown, if any? How far would Tamlin have gone to hide it from her if he knew?

How far dare I pry?

My eyes rested on the fork next to Feyre’s plate, a perfect opposite to the pristine one resting in front of me.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re rather strong for a High Fae?”

“Am I?”

“I’ll take that as a no.” I sucked on a piece of melon and debated. At least Feyre was forthcoming about her ignorance of the fae world, I would haven’t to fight her pride on it to solve every mystery. And I knew then she would tell me the truth if I asked. “Have you tested yourself against anyone?”

“Why would I?”

“Because you were resurrected and reborn by the combined powers of the seven High Lords. If I were you, I’d be curious to see if anything else transferred to me during that process.”

And it was true. Her lack of curiosity about her own potential was... unsettling given how much she craved knowledge of the rest of Prythian, even as I had spent considerable time hesitating at my own powers when I first came in to them. Still, I had wanted to know...

But I also hadn’t been nearly as _distracted_ as a child learning to be the High Lord’s heir as Feyre now was by the consequences of her time Under the Mountain.

“Nothing else _transferred_ to me,” Feyre said. Her horror spun right down the bond, shocked I would even think she had power. Her modesty and downright outrage that she could be such was absurdly endearing to watch.

“It’d just be rather... interesting if it did.” I threw in a smirk for good measure.

“It didn’t,” Feyre insisted, “and I’m not going to learn to read or shield with you.”

“Why? From spite? I thought you and I got past that Under the Mountain.”

“Don’t get me started on what you did to me Under the Mountain.”

Now it was my turn for my blood to chill.

I felt every ounce of my body still, the muscles pulling taut with the sensation of feeling the knife Feyre would rip across them.

It was one thing to feel her endless hatred rippling across that bond. Part of me was able to stomach the implications of it - the name calling, the crude gestures, the outright venom in her voice every time she spoke and her eyes glared at me sharp and full of reproach.

But to hear her say it? To hear her speak of the memory that haunted her day and night to the point that her own thoughts ran away from it so she wouldn’t have to suffer in the daylight, just to spite me... was another new hell entirely.

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I could hardly sit in the chair and share bread with her lest she see the devastating mess I’d become at her tongue, her stare.

I leaned forward, my breath coming in pants as the muscles at my back let loose looking for a release I only ever found in the skies. Just something to quiet the turbulent violence in my mind while I tried to find a way to apologize, to erase the past with some kind of sincerity that would let us go on, but-

I choked on the words, not knowing what to say.

_Don’t get me started on what you did to me Under the Mountain._

A sharp pain split in two running parallel lines down my back and I felt a weight escape, a weight that I masked in smoke and ash behind me. I was on the verge of unraveling completely as I opened my mouth to speak, terrified of what might come out or what she might say, when I heard the faint clicking of heels across the marble floor approaching.

My body released and with it went the wings that had almost manifested. I felt my mask slip back in place as the relief allowed my lazy, cool smile to reappear that seemed to confuse Feyre before she heard the footsteps too.

“We have company. We’ll discuss this later.”

“No we won’t,” Feyre said, but then Morrigan was breezing into the room like a cool summer breeze, grinning ear to ear. Feyre’s eyes widened.

“Hello, hello,” Mor practically sang into every crevice of the room.

“Feyre,” I said, “meet my cousin, Morrigan. Mor, meet the lovely, charming, and open-minded Feyre.”

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Mor said and my stomach instantly tensed. She walked straight up to Feyre, who held out her hand and found Mor swiping it away so she could crush her in a body binding hug instead. If I thought Feyre’s eyes had widened earlier, they were a pair of moons now as she sank into my cousin’s embrace.

Mor released her and took a spot between us at the table, but that red lipped mouth of hers kept on running, much to my chagrin.

“You look like you were getting under Rhys’s skin,” she said with no reservations whatsoever, ever the fiend at my back. “Good thing I came along. Though I’d enjoy seeing Rhys’s balls nailed to the wall.”

Mor shot me a wild, vicious look that I returned with equal fervor, brows near up to my forehead.

 _You’re supposed to be on my side_ , I seemed to say. In truth, she was supposed to be working, but that seemed to be the least of her concerns.

My eyes slid back to Feyre and caught her straightening herself up, the first I’d seen her give any indication of caring. “It’s - nice to meet you,” she said.

“Liar,” Mor said. “You want nothing to do with us, do you? And wicked Rhys is making you sit here.”

She was all brutal honesty today and likely just to spite me for going against her wishes to tell Feyre the truth about the mate bond - about everything.

And it drove me _batty_ that she might just decide to one up me and do the job in my stead.

“You’re... perky today, Mor,” I said. Her eyes flashed at me again.

 _I’m on_ her _side, dear cousin_ , the look said and I wanted to scream.

“Forgive me for being excited about having company _for once_.”

“You could be attending your own duties...” _Like I’d asked you too._ The strain in my voice started to crack me all over again, but Feyre seemed to be enjoying the back and forth. Either she was upset and I was a flirtatious pig, or I was irked and she was happy.

So be it.

“I needed a break,” Mor said, surveying the spread of foods and seeing what her never ending stomach felt like having for a mid-morning snack. “And you told me to come here whenever I liked, so what better time than now, when you brought my new friend to finally meet me?”

_I am working, charming the socks right off your mate where your sorry ass failed to._

She wouldn’t even look at me, but it was written all over that smile, that bright glowing skin Feyre couldn’t stop staring at.

Feyre’s attention idled between the two of us and I wished for just one moment it would stop on me long enough to linger in quiet ease the way she did for Mor. However much my cousin loved digging thorns in my side, I had to admit she had a way of pulling a brightness out of the darkest people.

A brightness I saw spark for a moment in Feyre that felt warm and comfortable.

“You two look nothing alike,” Feyre suddenly announced.

She wasn’t wrong.

It wasn’t just the way Morrigan’s bright turquoise clothes fashioned in the same style as the ones Feyre wore contrasted so sharply against the dark fabric of my tunic; it was everything else. From the bright sunshine gold of Mor’s hair to my near black strands flecked with blue, the sun-kissed hue of her skin against the deepening tan of my own, her slender build framed with muscles that shaped her against the larger build I held.

And that wasn’t to mention the differing ways we carried ourselves, our personas, even if we shared a common interest in fine wine and orchestrated music.

We were different in just about every way excepting all the ones that mattered. I supposed it made her my third for a reason.

“Mor is my cousin in the _loosest_ definition,” I explained. Mor’s smile blazed fiercely across the table even through a mouthful of tomato and cheese. “But we were raised together. She’s my only surviving family. And as my only remaining relative, Mor believes she is entitled to breeze in and out of my life as she sees fit.”

Somehow in the span of four sentences, Mor had inhaled her plate and added two good sized muffins to the mix before ignoring me plainly as she cut them and said, “So grumpy this morning.”

I was ready to bite at that when Feyre jumped in with a question I wasn’t ready for. “I didn’t see you Under the Mountain.”

And Mor, as casually as stating the weather outside, was more than willing to answer - honestly.

“Oh, I wasn’t there,” she said, “I was in-”

“Enough, Mor,” and I hated to admit even to myself how dark my tone went with her in that moment. Mor didn’t protest further, seeming to know there was a line we were too near crossing and Mother above, she let me have this one.

I still felt shivers down my spine tracing fear and anxiety along the bones. The truth could main like that when killing wasn’t an option.

I set my napkin aside and stood, signaling an end to our breakfast and deciding to let Feyre in on a kernel of truth surrounding Morrigan’s appearance, that she hadn’t just appeared out of thin air quite so magically.

“Mor will be here for the rest of the week,” I said, “but by all means, do not feel that you have to oblige her with your presence.”

And to that, my dear cousin stuck her tongue out at me in blatant disregard. I rolled her eyes and felt another flicker of amusement from Feyre, this time directed at _me_. It was enough that my tongue sharpened in defense.

I was so backwards, constantly craving her affection or at least her attention and then stumbling over myself in idiocy when she gave it to me.

“Did you eat enough?” Feyre inclined her head. “Good. Then let’s go. Your first lesson awaits.”

“If he pisses you off, Feyre,” Mor said behind me as I strode from the table, “feel free to shove him over the rail of the nearest balcony.”

I flipped her off over my shoulder and could feel the grin burn onto my back.

 _See, you’re on her side too_ , it said.

“Enjoy your breakfast,” Feyre said and was up out of her seat trailing me.

“Whenever you want company, give a shout.”

Ah, Morrigan. Ever the dutiful friend.

To the very end.

* * *

Feyre sat at the wooden table tucked inside the cozy alcove of the study with little resistance, having come around to the sensibility of the tasks at hand rather quickly after our quick morning chat with Mor.

But while Feyre was every bit the pragmatist, it was the stubborn iron-willed fighter that had cleaved bones in two to hurl at her enemies and made me fall in love with her who sat down to study.

Relief sank into my chest.

Feyre - my Feyre - was still there, somewhere.

“I know my alphabet,” she said. “I’m not that stupid.”

She eyed every book and piece of paper I set before her with hot disdain, her tongue cutting me like a razor with the way she spat the words out.

“I didn’t say you were stupid,” I replied. “I’m just trying to determine where we should begin. Since you’ve refused to tell me a thing about how much you know.”

“Can’t you hire a tutor?”

But for Feyre, even this level of discomfort felt a bit excessive given what she’d endured in front of me before. Reading compared to drunken parties spent half naked and many a night bathed in blood seemed like nothing.

And sitting there, itching to claw my eyes out in that vibrant set of clothes that added so much color back to her cheeks the way her Spring Court attire never did... it was kind of hot.

This woman could have eaten me alive if she had wanted to and she wasn’t the least bit aware.

“Is it that hard for you to even try in front of me?” I asked.

“You’re a High Lord - don’t you have better things to do?”

_What do you think I’m doing, darling?_

“Of course,” I said instead. “But none as enjoyable as seeing you squirm.”

And certainly nothing of my real job was as pleasurable as her company, even if her fingers didn’t twitch to pull her shoes from her feet and hurl them with that considerable fae strength of hers right at my head again.

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

I laughed dryly, happy to hear some of the snark returning. It suited her. “I’ve been called worse. In fact, I think you’ve called me worse.” I tapped the paper I’d set in front of her on the table, the one I’d written privately out of sight as soon as I’d left the breakfast table, just before she’d caught up with me. “Read that,” I instructed.

All at once, Feyre’s head swam. The letters on the page blurred before her, but I sensed it was more from the fear that made her reluctant to even try than any failings of actual effort.

“I can’t,” she said and her voice came out strained. But she was wrong.

“Try.”

Feyre stared longer and harder at the paper the second time around, but still she deflected. And it was just enough to chip away at some of the flirtation I’d managed to build between us and redirect the energy towards our earlier frustrations.

 _My_ earlier frustrations. At everything at stake for us both if she pushed herself back too far.

“What _exactly_ , is your stake in all this?” she asked. “You said you’d tell me if I worked with you.”

“I didn’t specify _when_ I’d tell you,” I said as she scooted away from on her seat. I shrugged. I wasn’t going to let her quit on herself no matter how terrified she was.

No matter how dispensable she found herself.

To me, Feyre was worth the effort. In every way.

She just didn’t see it.

“Maybe I resent the idea of you letting those sycophants and war-mongering fools in the Spring Court make you feel inadequate. Maybe I indeed enjoy seeing you squirm. Or maybe-”

“I get it,” she said by way of cutting me off, and I snorted, half amused and half proud.

“Try to read it, Feyre.”

Her hand snatched so violently at the paper it almost ripped in two between her fingers. She studied the first word for a long time and then finally - “Y-You... look..”

“Good,” I said gently, but even that was too much for her.

“I didn’t ask for you approval.”

So much pride in that busy little head of hers. I couldn’t stop the stupid grin from eating up my features nor the chuckle that toppled out of me.

“Ab... Absolutely... De... Del...” She paused considering the word and my insides danced, anticipating her reaction when she looked at me for help - the first she’d asked of me - and I purred the answer low against her face.

“Delicious,” I said.

Feyre’s face burned. Her head whipped to the paper, worked out the rest of the sentence and sent a stream of curse filled emotion down the bond towards me.

“ _You look absolutely delicious today, Feyre?!_ That’s what you wrote?”

Time for the second half of the day’s lesson to begin, now that she was good and riled up for it. Hopefully, the emotion would help.

Without warning or word, my mental claws sank right into the wide open doorways of Feyre’s mind and took hold. I leaned back in my chair, making it look easy, showing her the proof she needed to realize what was at stake if she didn’t put the effort in to learning these skills. Without them, she could very well die and that wasn’t a chance I was willing to take even if she was.

_It’s true, isn’t it?_

I spoke directly into her mind. And even if it made me a filthy prick to her, I meant it. Despite how unhealthy she’d grown since I’d seen her last, I couldn’t get the image of her in those bright shades of fabric out of my mind, an image that would haunt me weeks after she’d left for the week.

Feyre jumped, her chair sliding beneath her, and she screamed back at me, _“Stop that!”_

 _The fashion of the Night Court suits you_ , I said as I dug my claws in deeper, paralyzed her body with unyielding confusion she couldn’t possibly escape.

_This is what happens when you leave your mental shields down. Someone with my sort of powers could slip inside, see what they want, and take your mind for themselves. Or they could shatter it. I’m currently standing on the threshold of your mind... but if I were to go deeper, all it would take would be half a thought from me and who you are, your very self, would be wiped away._

Feyre’s skin grew slick with fear, but still she didn’t move - didn’t try, and still I pressed her.

_You should be afraid. You should be afraid of this, and you should be thanking the gods-damned Cauldron that in the past three months, no one with my sorts of gifts has run into you. Now shove me out._

She did nothing. Did not move with her mind nor her body, didn’t even think herself capable of it and that alone pissed me off to no end.

My Feyre was _more_ than capable. I just had to find her.

_Shove. Me. Out._

I ground the words into her skull until she felt me closing in on her when in reality, I was at a reasonably safe distance. In time, with enough practice, she’d see that. But until then...

Feyre’s mind ran - in too many directions and all at once.

She slammed into her own mental barriers and I hummed a laugh across the bridge connecting us, guiding her towards it. _That way, Feyre_.

Just as she had when she’d birthed her plan for the Middengard Wyrm, Feyre’s eyes sparked and she ran, not just as the open path to escape, but at some hidden agenda gaining traction in her mind. And then before I even saw it coming, that cunning little warrior girl hurtled her entire _essence_ at me and my claws retracted, even if I still had to half force them to.

“Good,” I said. But even while Feyre slumped in her chair, content to just quit, that demon inside of me reared again to spur her on to finish it. “Not yet. Shield. Block me out so I can’t get back in.”

Feyre’s mind gave half a lean towards sleep and the quiet comfort of her bed before my claws traced the outskirts of her mind and she started at once. A wall of thick, black adamant slammed against the tips of my nails and I retracted them, this time out of necessity instead of force or willing defeat.

Even half dazed for sleep, she hadn’t given up. Not entirely.

I had never been prouder yet.

“Very nice,” I said grinning ear to ear. “Blunt, but nice.”

Feyre, it seemed, felt differently even if there was no doubting her quick progress. She snatched my _delicious_ paper up and tore it to shreds.

“You’re a pig,” she said, a little less testily due to her fatigue.

“Oh, most definitely. But look at you - you read that whole sentence, kicked me out of your mind, _and_ shielded. Excellent work.”

“Don’t condescend to me.”

“I’m not. You’re reading at a level far higher than I anticipated.”

Feyre’s cheeks burned bright as the sun. I counted my lucky stars Cassian wasn’t hear to witness this. “But mostly illiterate,” she said.

At that, I settled myself for her. “At this point, it’s about practice, spelling, and more practice. You could be reading novels by Nynsar. And if you keep adding to those shields, you might very well keep me out entirely by then, too.”

I had meant it lightly, another flirtation meant to spur her into our games, our banter that kept her awake - kept her _alive_ it seemed, or at least _going_ until the next.

But Feyre’s mind quieted more than I expected, her thoughts shifting elsewhere.

“Is it even possible - to truly keep you out?”

“Not likely,” I said, sensing something else brewing behind the question. “But who knows how deep that power goes? Keep practicing and we’ll see what happens.”

“And will I still be bound by this bargain at Nynsar, too?”

Blank. My mind went utterly blank. Lifeless, even.

Feyre turned to stare at me when I failed to answer her.

_Don’t get me started on what you did to me Under the Mountain._

She sat up a little straighter and leaned towards me, the most intent and focused I’d seen her since she arrived. I couldn’t look away for anything, not when she deigned to look at me so.

“After - after what happened, I think we can agree that I owe you nothing, and you owe _me_ nothing. Isn’t it enough that we’re all free?” Her hand fell to the table rattling my bones, the tattoo upturned to stare daggers at me in a way she meant for me not to escape. “By the end, I thought you were different, thought that it was all a mask, but taking me away, _keeping_ me here...”

I swallowed as her mind poured over Cauldron knew what words to torment me with next, but she’d done enough.

_Isn’t it enough that we’re all free?_

_I owe you nothing._

_I thought you were different..._

I was different. Fuck - I _am_ different. I just needed her to let me have a shot in hell at proving it to her.

“I’m not your enemy, Feyre.”

“Tamlin says you are. Everyone else says you are.”

On the table, her tattooed hand fisted, covering that eye right up.

But I didn’t give a shit about Tamlin anymore.

“And what do _you_ think?”

I leaned away, craving a little bit of space just to think, but there was no going back from the turn the conversation had taken now.

“You’re doing a damned good job of making me agree with them.”

“Liar,” I said and it wasn’t even hard to say it. “Did you even tell your friends about _what I did to you Under the Mountain_?”

Feyre almost flinched and stopped me at once. “I don’t want to talk about anything related to that. With you or them.”

At last, we were getting somewhere.

“No, because it’s so much easier to pretend it never happened and let them coddle you.”

“I don’t _let_ them coddle me-”

“They had you wrapped up like a present yesterday. Like you were _his_ reward.”

“So?”

“So?” My insides felt ready to explode - to peel and shred and melt until I was disintegrating from the inside out. She had no idea - no, she _had_ an idea. She knew exactly what they were doing to her and even if it would have been okay to admit she wasn’t ready to face it, she wouldn’t go anywhere near even admitting the problem was there in the first place.

And suddenly, I didn’t care if Feyre owed me nothing - and truly, at the end of the day, she didn’t. I didn’t care if I became a monster to her or if she thought this week a prison sentence. And really, I knew she didn’t feel it was.

The home she longed for was the real prison and I would keep her out of it as long as I could if it meant the chance for her to realize what that bastard beast was doing to her day in and day out.

If it would give her a chance... to get better. To breathe and live and understand that being here could be a freedom more infinite than any prison.

“I’m ready to be taken home.”

She said it with some degree of ease, not unlike the masks I’d worn for years on end.

“Where you’ll be cloistered for the rest of your life, especially once you start punching out heirs. I can’t wait to see what Ianthe does when she gets her hands on _them_.”

“You don’t seem to have a particularly high opinion of her.”

_“I heard you like to play games. I think you’ll find me a diverting playmate...”_

A flash of bare skin, a seductive smile, and the vile, violated feeling she’d once given me swept over me in a wave of icy wrath.

“No, I can’t say that I do.” I tapped the fresh sheet of paper in front of her. “Start copying the alphabet. Until your letters are perfect. And every time you get through a round, lower and raise your shield. Until _that_ is second nature. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“What?” Feyre stared at me, perhaps slightly in surprise that _Ianthe_ of all things had done the trick.

“Copy. The. Alphabet. Until-”

“I heard what you said.”

 _Prick. Prick, prick,_ prick.

For the first time, her curses burned at me rather than amused and I snapped.

“Then get to work,” I said, springing to my feet with a sleekness I didn’t think I possessed in that heat. “And at least have the decency to only call me a prick when your shields are back up.”

And without another word from her or me, I winnowed into thin air.

* * *

In the hour I disappeared from Feyre’s side, I found Morrigan still at the breakfast table eating merrily away while rifling through papers she’d brought with her.

Papers I recognized.

“Did you really have to be such an ass about my joining you this morning?” she asked without looking up. “Or did you actually mind that I interfered?”

My eyes fluttered shut briefly before i walked across the room to one of the open airways and inhaled the scent of fresh air and snow capped mountains deep into my lungs.

“No,” I said, with a heavy sigh. The sound of papers shuffling behind me ceased, replaced by the crisp crunch of an apple being freshly bitten. “I just wasn’t expecting it, though I certainly should have. I am... glad you were there. Feyre seems to like you.”

“Of course she did.” No modesty whatsoever. “It’s only you and dear Cassian I can’t seem to charm.”

That wasn’t entirely true and it didn’t escape my notice she quietly left Azriel’s name off that list.

“Tell me about the Hewn City,” I said.

“Talk about grumpy...”

Mor proceeded to fill me in as flustered thoughts I had shoved to the back of my mind in the last week of magical objects and enemies I’d long thought dead consumed me for the proceeding hour.

* * *

Feyre was hunched over the wooden table when I returned. Her face scrunched and crinkled unpleasantly every so often, but she was trying and doing remarkably well from what I could sense. Her innate curiosity about the world and determination to learn, to be practical, made her a quick study.

It was nothing short of impressive.

I approached slowly, allowing her to note my presence in a way she sometimes did not have the luxury of doing with others, until I was standing over her shoulder. The letters she scripted on the pages in front of her were neater and clearer than the ones born on the pages she had shoved aside from the start.

“Not bad,” I said, allowing a simple trace of pride to lace my voice, lest she roar at me again.

Even better than her letters was her mind. My claws scraped along the perimeter of that beautiful black adamant she’d locked in place, pushing and testing and continually coming up short. Feyre’s face scrunched at each push in the same way it did when she wrote a particularly difficult word or letter and it made my chest relax.

“Well, well,” I purred when I’d finished perusing her progress, “hopefully I’ll be getting a good night’s rest at last, if you can manage to keep the wall up while you sleep.”

_Prick!_

The word blasted through my mind like lightning between folds of wind, so fast and vicious and gone in a wink that Feyre had her mental shields back in place before I even blinked at her. Behind my own shields, an electrifying pulse I wanted to feel again and again if it meant seeing this kind of life pour out of her swept over my being.

“Prick I might be, but look at you. Maybe we’ll get to have some fun with our lessons after all.”

I shouldn’t have been at all surprised she would insist on walking so far behind me as I led her up one of the tallest towers in the palace and on towards the room that held the first answers I had promised her.

The answers that could save or damn us both.

The room we entered was circular and carved from stone, maps of our world hanging about with markings and pins denoting cities and territories both known and unknown to those outside my circle.

And at the center sat a large black stone with the most important map of all. A simple map of Prythian and Hybern. Feyre’s eyes glanced over both but didn’t seem to note any particular distinctions between the territories. But I knew she was looking - really _looking_. I wouldn’t bring her here for nothing and she knew it.

When Feyre looked up, I raised my brows waiting.

“Nothing to ask?“

“No.”

She it so casually, with such feigned innocence, that feral teasing smirk of mine slipped out. “What do you see?”

“Is this some sort of way of convincing me to embrace my reading lessons?”

It was then that I felt a wave of her exhaustion slip over her. We had not even made it to noontime.

“Tell me what you see.”

Feyre looked at the map again and promptly answered with the easiest, most obvious reply. And it just so happened to be the right one.

“A world divided in two.”

“And do you think it should remain that way?”

Her head snapped up, eyes glaring - a snake ready to strike lest I do harm.

“My family-”

“Your human family,” I corrected, “would be deeply impacted if the wall came down, wouldn’t they? So close to its border... If they’re lucky, they’ll flee across the ocean before it happens.”

“ _Will_ it happen?”

Every nerve in her body pulsed with fear, the first real, incredible fear she’d felt since being here with me.

Since leaving that Mountain.

I held her gaze. “Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Because war is coming, Feyre.”


	4. No One's Subject (Chapter 7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7 of ACOMAF from Rhys's POV in which Feyre concludes her first week with Rhys in the Night Court and returns to Tamlin.

Feyre spoke immediately without any room to trust me, her emotional fear for her family’s safety gutting her like a fish freshly hauled along a slick boat deck. And at once, I was the culprit holding the knife.

“Don’t invade,” she said, her voice coming in great, disheveled breaths. “Don’t invade - please.”

The level to which she was prepared to beg me to spare her and her sisters - already was begging me - tightened my throat with fear.

“You truly think I’m a monster, even after everything.”

A statement, not a question. But Feyre delivered the answer that flayed me alive nonetheless.

“Please,” and her voice dropped even lower. “They’re defenseless, they won’t stand a chance-”

“I’m not going to invade the mortal lands.”

I cut her off, unable to bear another word off her tongue as the disappointment crashed over me.

Three months under that rock together.

Three months she saw me torture her cruelly, parade her before her worst enemies, sneer at her love, and threaten her life if she did not commit to a bargain she would not have needed to survive in the end.

Had I really been so foolish to assume that pain would be erased by ten minutes of screaming for her on the throne room floor as Amarantha’s power - _my_ power - knocked me down; as I _bled_ for her and sobbed when I pulled her into myself to keep from hearing that awful sound of bone snapping from ringing in my ears...

Feyre’s sense of weightlessness as her mind started to dizzy and she felt the world let go so she could fall into fear and beggary at my feet was my condemnation.

“Put your damn shield up,” I growled, not even caring that it was harsh. I didn’t want to feel one more damned shred of proof from her that I deserved this villainy in spite of my miserable, continued hope. Not right now, at least. Not in front of her.

But all Feyre could think about were her sisters living unprotected and powerless in that mansion beyond the wall, how tired and weak she felt to do anything about it.

She still didn’t see herself as a soldier, as a weapon, as powerful or sleek as the billowing night - the way I saw her. That needed to change - immediately.

“Shield. _Now.”_

My voice was firm, halting even.

And it worked.

A momentary glimpse into her head of her family needing her to save them one more time and then... I saw and felt nothing from her. Her shields were replaced.

_Good girl._

“Did you think it would end with Amarantha?” I asked.

“Tamlin hasn’t said...”

Of course he hadn’t said anything. I cursed inwardly and prepared to ready Feyre as one would a soldier on the battlefield staring the eye of death in the face.

“The King of Hybern has been planning his campaign to reclaim the world south of the wall for over a hundred years,” I said. “Amarantha was an experiment - a forty-nine-year test, to see how easily and how long a territory might fall and be controlled by one of his commanders.”

And it had given him all the bright, shining answers he’d longed for. In our blind, trusting ignorance, we’d fallen like dominoes, pawns across the chess table replaced by dirt and blood rather than queens.

“Will he attack Prythian first?”

I pointed to the map between us on that cold stone flat and Feyre followed my gesture, her fingers fidgeting a bit on the ends of the display.

“Prythian is all that stands between the King of Hybern and the continent. He wants to reclaim the human lands there - perhaps seize the faeries lands, too. If anyone is to intercept his conquering fleet before it reaches the continent, it would be us.”

Feyre didn’t wait even a moment when I’d finished before she passed to one of the chairs a few feet away and sunk down. Her knees shook horribly to the point that I was slightly surprised she’d managed to walk the short distance her trip took.

But the first lesson any soldier learns on the battlefield is that even when all seems lost and as dark and treacherous as it might go, there is always room for an ensuing blow.

And it is best to learn that lesson swiftly.

“He will seek to remove Prythian from his way swiftly and thoroughly. And shatter the wall at some point in the process.” From the chair, even with her shields perfectly in tact, I felt Feyre’s blood run cold. “There are already holes in it, though mercifully small enough to make it difficult to swiftly pass his armies through. He’ll want to bring the whole thing down - and likely use the ensuing panic to his advantage.”

Feyre wouldn’t look me in the eye when she spoke, which she did with a shaking stuttering breath I didn’t think she quite registered. She was lost inside that head realizing the reality at hand - even unto herself.

“When - when is he going to attack?”

“That is the question and why I brought you here.”

At that, Feyre did look up.

“I don’t know when or where he plans to attack Prythian. I don’t know who his allies here might be.”

“He’d have allies here?”

Genuine shock, but beneath it all, Feyre’s curiosity was a treasure that continued to pump a lifeblood into my hope that my plans were achievable, even if torn from the frays of lunacy.

“Cowards,” I said, nodding in reply, “who would bow and join him, rather than fight his armies again.”

Just as they had when Amarantha took power and half my wretched court had joined her.

_My own court lost... forever damned on the pages of history to terror and torment..._

“Did...” Feyre looked at me thoughtfully, although unsure whether this question was allowed. “Did you fight in the War?”

Such an honest question... and perhaps the first personal question she’d bothered to ask me. For a moment, I was struck speechless by it, the idea that she cared even that much to learn some trivial fact about my past amidst a backdrop of increasing loathing for me.

Or perhaps it was merely her curiosity getting the best of her again.

Either way, I would have that personal invasion at once. Let her take whatever pieces great or small of me that she would have.

I nodded and then stepped to the adjoining chair where I sat, removing my general’s helmet in the process so she could hear my story for what it really was. Back then, I was just a soldier too, like she was now.

“I was young - by our standards, at least. But my father had sent aid to the mortal-faeries alliance on the continent, and I convinced him to let me take a legion of our soldiers. I was stationed in the south, right where the fighting was thickest. The slaughter was...”

On some distant instinct of my past possibly, I stared at the map on the wall and traced the route I’d taken that day, away from the home I’d grown up in, towards the pin that still marked the southern city I’d fought in. Images - most of them violent and horrible and something worse than my nightmares flashed before my eyes. It was an effort not to shudder.

So many lost...

“I have no interest in ever seeing full-scale slaughter like that again.”

Feyre’s silence, her willingness to both learn and listen, was what reeled me back in and calmed the carnage inside me enough to return to simpler truths rooted in the here and now.

My mate, and I chuckled darkly to myself, who even without meaning to could temper my restless, wandering spirit with nothing more than her simple agreement to hear my pain and not flinch.

“But I don’t think the King of Hybern will strike that way,” I continued, “not at first. He’s too smart to waste his forces here, to give the continent time to rally while we fight him. If he makes his move to destroy Prythian and the wall, it’ll be through stealth and trickery. To weaken us. Amarantha was the first part of that plan. We now have several untested High Lords, broken courts with High Priestesses angling for control like wolves around a carcass, and a people who have realized how powerless they might truly be.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Feyre’s voice had grown very, very thin.

I schooled my features, into as much neutrality as I could beneath the cold casting my skin into stone as I stared at her and finally crested the peaks of what truths I needed to get out of her.

“I am telling you for two reasons. One, you’re... close to Tamlin.” That sentence alone tasted like ash in my mouth. “He has men - but he also has long-existing ties to Hybern-”

“He’d _never_ help the king-”

I held up a hand, both out of further disappointment she thought I’d assume he would and because there was a very great chance she was wrong regardless of what I thought.

“I want to know if Tamlin is willing to fight with us. If he can use those connections to our advantage. As he and I have strained relations, you have the pleasure of being the go-between.”

“He doesn’t inform me of those things.”

“Perhaps it’s time he did. Perhaps it’s time you insisted.”

Our gazes went to the map hanging on the wall - the little village marked where Feyre’s sisters sat in dangerous territory waiting...

Feyre offered me no further objection. Some small seed of desperate hope it was that she would approach her once betrothed. I had confidence she would at least try.

“What is your other reason?”

I looked Feyre over, looked at how strong she was beneath her skin that had already lost a tinge of the pale color it carried from nights of throwing everything up. She was powerful. So, so very powerful.

“You have a skill set that I need. Rumor has it you caught a Suriel.”

Feyre’s lips twitched and I had the distinct impression she wished to roll her eyes, shrug off the observation. “It wasn’t that hard.”

“I’ve tried and failed. Twice. But that’s a discussion for another day. I saw you trap the Middengard Wyrm like a rabbit,” and look damned fierce and brave and beautiful doing it, I wanted to add, enough to make me feel - I shook the memory off. Not now.

“I need you to help me. To use those skills of yours to track down what I need.”

“What _do_ you need? Whatever was tied to my reading and shielding, I’m guessing?”

I could have told her then. About the War. About how it had ended and who had done it, what a mess was left in its wake that might very well ruin us all still.

About the lost magical objects causing uprising and mayhem all across Prythian that nearly always resulted in the death of more fae - my fae.

But...

 _She’s not your ma_ t _e, she’s not your_ anything.

My mind twisted away longing for those caves of darkness and despair where I had only shadows for friends.

“You’ll learn of that later,” I said simply and Feyre didn’t protest, seeming used to my vagueness by now. But she was on to the next argument, the next way out.

“There have to be at least a dozen other hunters more experienced and skilled-”

“Maybe there are. But you’re the only one I trust.”

Feyre blinked, momentarily stunned I would trust her. Truly, I could see she didn’t want to believe it was real that I would feel that for her. Again I watched three months of lost time burn behind my eyes.

“I could betray you,” she said, slowly and addled with frustration, “whenever I feel like it.”

“You could. But you won’t.” And I believed it. Word for word. Despite her hatred for me. She was too smart to let the world burn over petty differences and personal sins. “And then there’s the matter of your powers.”

Feyre glowered at once, a whole new form of anger. “I don’t have any powers.”

“Don’t you? The strength, the speed... If I didn’t know better, I’d say you and Tamlin were doing a very good job of pretending you’re normal. That the powers you’re displaying aren’t usually the first indications among our kind that a High Lord’s son might become his Heir.”

“I’m not a High Lord.”

Fact in her mind, not opinion.

But a lie nonetheless.

A greedy, selfish kind of joy rolled through me as visions took shape, visions I’d had planted there for weeks since I’d seen her on that balcony and felt the bond between us snap me in two. The depth of the roots those images had taken in my mind were toxic and alluring, one of the few that once I allowed myself the immeasurable pleasure of birthing them, I could hardly tear myself away.

_Feyre kneeling on the dais, head bowed low, never in submission, but in preparedness for the glory and majesty to come..._

“No, but you were given life by all seven of us. Your very essence is tied to us, born of us. What if we gave you more than we expected?”

_Her dress a sweeping, stunning drapery clinging to her skin before fanning out behind her in sworls of shadow and smoke, power dripping from her pores..._

“What if you could stand against us - hold your own, a High Lady?”

_The blue of her eyes sparkling like diamonds swept across the heavens, none above her to crush her down ever again as the crown is placed upon her head and she swears the words that bind her to her court forever... a High Lady among us._

“There are no High Ladies,” Feyre says at once, but too late. I see her now, even sitting in the chair next to me, I already see the future she could have if she wanted it, willed it with the blood gifted to her.

“We’ll talk about _that_ later, too,” I said, shaking my head to dismiss the ridiculous notion she was resigned to her present state, never to be lifted up. “But yes, Feyre - there _can_ be High Ladies. And perhaps you aren’t one of them, but...”

_The crown would touch her head and unending, triumphant Night would gleam from her hair, her skin, her every piece of soul she possessed as I lifted her up hand to hand and proclaimed her sacred and eternal for the entire world to see._

_My mate._

_My everything from once ‘not anything_.’

_To me and Prythian both. The savior who bound us all together with infinite power and existence. The key not just to our surviving, but to our living as well._

“What if you were something similar? What if you were able to wield the power of seven High Lords at once? What if you could blend into darkness, or shape-shift, or freeze over an entire room - an entire army?”

Feyre did not utter a single word, but I could see it in her eyes, that creeping chill that took hold in her heart and whispered the possibilities to which she might reply with some small flicker of honest desire.

Even just that brief promise, it was _radiant_ to behold.

“Do you understand what that might mean in an oncoming war? Do you understand how it might destroy you if you don’t learn to control it?”

“One, stop asking so many rhetorical questions,” Feyre said, jerking her out of her quiet contemplation. “Two, we don’t know if I _do_ have these powers-”

“You do. But you need to start mastering them. To learn what you inherited from us.”

“And I suppose you’re the one to teach me, too? Reading and shielding aren’t enough?”

“While you hunt with me for what I need, yes.”

She shook her head equal parts amused and affronted, but I was unabashed. Work with me. Use me. Save me - and Prythian. I’d waited three very long months to offer her that place.

And of course, it all came crashing back to this one horrifying mentality of hers that would plague me to the ends of the earth if it didn’t kill me first.

“Tamlin won’t allow it.”

“Tamlin isn’t your keeper, and you know it.”

“I’m in his subject, and he is my High Lord-”

“You are _no one’s subject.”_

Power rippled off my body in thick, black shadows that flashed what I knew were the threat of wings at my back. I hadn’t shown them to her since I fled the mountain, but when it came to Tamlin and his death grip over Feyre’s free will, it was hard not to... break hold completely.

“I will say this once - and only once,” I said with a deadly purr meant just as much for that fool who caged my mate just as much as I did for Feyre who I left behind at her seat while I stalked to that map on the wall. “You can be a pawn, be someone’s reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life bowing and scraping and pretending you’re less than him, than Ianthe, than any of us. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it’s your choice.”

It was more than a shame really, but no one gave Feyre the option of doing anything but that, so rather than be accused of doing the same to her - shoving her into one type of person even if my disdain was obvious for the alternative - I gave her the freedom to choose regardless of what it meant for me.

I had to.

And it was threatening to kill me to do it.

“But I know you - more than you realize, I think.” _Cauldron, so much more._

A flash of hands in a wooded patch, in a dimly lit room smudged with paint, or chasing fire on a dark night in Spring all flashed behind my eyes.

The huntress.

The artist.

The adventurer.

All of these magnificent things she’d lost.

“And I don’t believe for one damn minute that you’re remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for nearly fifty years, then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart-”

“Stop it-”

“Or you’ve got another choice. You can master whatever powers we gave to you, and make it count. You can play a role in this war. Because war is coming one way or another, and do not try to delude yourself that any of the Fae will give a shit about your family across the wall when our whole territory is likely to become a charnel house.

“You want to save the mortal realm?” I turned to find Feyre staring at the map, right at that pin that damned her family to hell. “Then become someone Prythian listens to. Become vital. Become a weapon. Because there might be a day, Feyre, when only you stand between the King of Hybern and your human family. And you do not want to be unprepared.”

She was deadly still. Preternaturally quiet.

But inside, I could hear her body rage, her breath come to her out of the barest necessity.

“Think it over. Take the week. Ask Tamlin, if it’ll make you sleep better. See what charming Ianthe says about it. But it’s your choice to make - no one else’s.”

It wasn’t even hard to say.

For I was done playing games.

* * *

I didn’t see Feyre for the rest of the week. Made it a point not to.

Not until the morning before her week was up and I would have to take her back. The anxiety over that departure roiled through my gut with disturbing levels of destruction.

If I wasn’t careful, I’d soon be entirely unhinged and that was a risk I couldn’t take.

I’d offered her a partnership, something I hoped she would consider neutral middle ground where we could come together, eventually without the bargain forcing us to, and put our considerable powers together.

Tamlin included.

There was no such thing as forgiveness between him and I. There never would be. But we had one thing in common that made an alliance not only plausible, but imperative: we both loved Feyre, dearly and possibly to the point of death.

Where there was blood and feuding between us stood a war ripping the fabric of our mutual hatred for one another to pieces. I always knew that Feyre would refuse to work with me alone, so I asked a great burden of her, one more to rest atop the pile I placed upon her shoulders the second I met her on Calanmai.

Fill the gap between her great love and myself, the one left in place of our feud that war would wipe out.

I’d asked her to think about it, to take the week alone with her work and her thoughts. I wasn’t going to disturb that or allow further fuel to be added to the fire that might incline her towards refusing.

Even after I took her back...

Even after I took her back, there was an overwhelming chance she would still say no, that the scars between us were too insurmountable to heal and I would be more vulnerable than I wanted to be.

But I had to try.

So I let her be and threw myself into my work in the process.

The week passed by sluggishly. I left Mor to confines of the palace lest Feyre call for company; I could have heard her call for me even from another court if she’d tugged hard enough, though I sincerely doubted at every moment that she would ever willingly _want_ for my company.

But Feyre never called and her nightmares never consumed her so horribly that she didn’t wake of her own accord and soothe herself back to sleep.

It wasn’t until that morning before she was to leave that I finally saw her again. Always before she took up her place at her study table, I left her day’s work without lingering long enough for her to catch me.

“Azriel would want to know that,” Mor said, lounging on the sofa that sat lovingly in the cool breeze floating inside from the wide open balcony over which I paced.

That scent of her - _Feyre_ \- tickled over my nose. A sharp cut of grass and pine with a hint of acrylic lurking just behind it, likely from her many paints long ago, hung loosely in the air, but she might as well have been standing inches in front of me, the scent was that potent to my blood.

Yes, Azriel would want to know. About Keir. About the murmurings in the Hewn City, the whispers of secrets and betrayals. About all of it.

Azriel who knew everything including what I last ate for dinner and what time I woke in the morning. My brother knew everything and with good reason to.

But right now with war rising up on one side and my mate decaying on the other, I didn’t care one damn bit about Azriel.

“Azriel can go to hell,” I said with a bite cutting my words. Feyre was leaving soon. “He likely already knows, anyway.”

“We played games the last time,” Mor replied, trying to keep a level calm. She knew where my agitations came from on both ends. “And we lost. Badly. We’re not going to do that again.”

“You should be working. I gave you control for a reason, you know.”

I didn’t hear Morrigan say anything and realized as Feyre’s scent picked up that my cousin had spotted her. I wanted to look at Feyre and feel hope - just for once, some inkling that it was okay. But Feyre stared at me with her own skepticism and doubt. “Say what it is you came here to say, Mor.”

Morrigan offered none of her usual optimism for me. Just that cool, queenly address that won her allegiances in every court and blood on every battlefield the world over.

“There was another attack - at a temple in Cesere. Almost every priestess slain, the trove looted.”

My blood turned to oil within my veins, Mor’s words the match that would light them on fire. And when I demanded answers of her, the lone word passing my lips was no mere ember, but a towering pillar of smoke and fire and destruction burning towards the skies.

“Who.”

“We don’t know,” Mor answered without leveling. “Same tracks as last time: small group, bodies that showed signs of wounds from large blades, and no trace of where the came from and how they disappeared. No survivors. The bodies weren’t even found until a day later, when a group of pilgrims came by.”

All I heard before the darkness took hold was Feyre’s cracked squeak of shock and revulsion.

_Hybern._

Hybern had done this. He hadn’t even taken prisoners or hostages. Nothing but unending carnage in his quest to win the world. He’d already done it several times over, hopping from temple to temple and not just in the time since Amarantha’s demise. When I’d come home from her court, Azriel had given me a list a mile long of different temples and holy cities that had been burned, hidden caves and islands trashed that no man nor fae would ever have found or dared disturb excepting a fearless, limitless shadowsinger and a bloodthirsty madman from the east.

For several long moments, I was engulfed in the rich black of Night, the darkness that shreds and pains, before the skin at my back tore painlessly in two clean slits and for the first time all week, I gave form to those great membranous wings that bore me across the sky. And it felt like some missing piece of the puzzle had come back to me even if other pieces were missing. The wings grounded me into the earth with purpose. I took one look off that balcony and knew what I needed, needed in a way nothing and no one could ever give me.

“What did Azriel have to say about it?” I asked knowing that he was likely the one who delivered the news in the first place.

“He’s pissed,” Mor said while Feyre sat silently by listening. I was glad she was here for this, to hear evidence give weight to the arguments I’d lain at her feet earlier this week. “Cassian even more so - he’s convinced it must be one of the rogue Illyrian war-bands, intent on winning new territory.”

“It’s something to consider,” I said, even if it wasn’t entirely true. “Some of the Illyrian clans gleefully bowed to Amarantha during those years. Trying to expand their borders could be their way of seeing how far they can push me and get away with it.”

Mor stood and cast an apologetic look at Feyre before turning to me. “Cassian and Az are waiting - they’re waiting in the usual spot for your orders.” I watched the clouds roll by the mountain peaks in great thunderous heads, wind chasing them on and I too longed to hunt them. Needed it. “Winnowing in would be easier,” Mor concluded, tailing my gaze.

“Tell the pricks I’ll be there in a few hours,” I said.

Mor didn’t bother arguing. My cousin vanished and I knew I’d find her waiting for the three of us in Velaris this evening when we got back from Cesere’s ruins and possibly the Illyrian mountains too if it was in fact needed as Cassian suspected.

While I knew Hybern was behind the temple, the Illyrians had been restless.

“How does that... vanishing work?”

Feyre’s soft voice was full of that wondrous curiosity again I so loved to hear. My soul quieted, but I knew one look at her and I might shatter from the thought of tomorrow promised in her eyes.

“Winnowing?” I said, finding the words came easily to me. “Think of it as... two different points on a piece of cloth. One point is your current place in the world. The other one across the cloth is where you want to go. Winnowing... it’s like folding that cloth so the two spots align. The magic does the folding - and all we do is take a step to get from one place to another. Sometimes it’s a long step, and you can feel the dark fabric of the world as you pass through it. A shorter step, let’s say from one end of the room to the other, would barely register. It’s a rare gift, and a helpful one. Though only the stronger Fae can do it. The more powerful you are, the farther you can jump between places in one go.”

And then, despite the technicalities and the anxiety threading between us, despite everything, Feyre offered me that endless, brilliant compassion she served so freely to any and all who came to her, a rare gem that I treasured in that shattering moment of dismay.

“I’m sorry about the temple,” she said gently, “and the priestesses.”

When I turned around to look at her, there was no distaste, no fight. Only a shared understanding of loss and something that was broken.

“Plenty more people are going to die soon enough, anyway,” I said.

“What are... What are Illyrian war-bands?”

My outright frustration with the pricks of my youth masked my amusement at how she tried to distract me from pain, almost as though she...

“Arrogant bastards, that’s what.” My wings flexed rigidly behind me in the sunlight as though taking my reply as a personal offense against their heritage. “They’re a warrior-race within my lands. And general pains in my ass.”

“Some of them supported Amarantha?”

“Some. But me and mine have enjoyed ourselves hunting them down these past few months. And ending them.”

And we had. It was enough to keep Azriel and Cassian off the real scent of war coming and it provided a welcome distraction for me while the three of us took care of unruly problems within those cursed mountains that needed dealing with anyway.

“That’s why you stayed away - you were busy with that?”

Part of me wanted to read into that, to dare wish she asked because she liked the idea that I was forced away from her rather than chose it, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Tomorrow, though... Tomorrow, I would be forced away from her whether I liked it or not.

 _I was busy staying away from you lest I drown and never come back_.

“I was busy with many things.”

I didn’t say goodbye before I plunged myself off that ledge and flew through the thick of the oncoming storm to join my brothers in the cold of the Illyrian Steppes.

* * *

The temple had been a disaster. Enough that I didn’t indulge Azriel and Cassian on a trip to hunt down potential war-bands on our flight back to camp.

We landed in the middle of the night as storm clouds settled over the mountains peppering them with fresh layers of snow, and spent a half an hour discussing the ruins we’d found, the bodies that had been strewn about the dirt and stone like trampled weeds. There had been blood everywhere.

Whatever prize the ran-sackers had sought, they’d found it and left no stone untouched in the process. Everything about the temple had been destroyed beyond recognition.

It burned a hole inside my soul to see something so sacred to our realms and in the northern heart of _my_ court ripped to shreds.

My brothers wanted me to stay the night or at least winnow back to the palace to avoid the storm. Even Cassian threw a wary eye out the window once the rain started to fall and the winds howled through the cabin. The front door burst open without me so much as touching the handle.

But Feyre.

Feyre, Feyre, Feyre.

She was waiting and she was leaving.

I flew all night to get to her.

I wasn’t stupid enough to think I couldn’t winnow if the wind and elements became too much for me to handle, but by the time I reached the outer ridges of Illyrian territory, most of the storm had passed. I wondered if the temple would be washed clean by morning with the direction the clouds were rolling, further and further north.

And the whole time I flew, it was an effort not to think of what was coming, what I was flying back to.

The disgusted looks. The biting remarks. And one million questions about what would play out in the next three weeks as I waited to go to her again.

She was so brave. So beautiful. But Tamlin had her at his mercy every second. There was not a thought in her head that didn’t pass his inspection first before she let it past her lips.

There was no need to ask if he would love her, care for her, give her the basics she needed to survive. But now all I wondered was how she would respond. Was what I offered her enough to make her _live_?

The palace glimmered in the waking sunlight far below me, the snow along the rooftops glinting. My wings snapped at my back, tucking in tight against the muscles rippling beneath my open wrinkled shirt.

And I fell. Fell so far and so hard with an empty sensation rattling through me that when my wings snapped back open to stop me crashing hard against the rocky cliffside, I thought they nearly broke off from the impact.

Silently, I glided onto that open balcony Feyre had seen me fall from hours before and crashed into one of the chairs.

The remaining hours ticked silently by as I stared out at my court. The drink I’d summoned which was the last thing anyone should have been drinking for breakfast did nothing to soothe the dull ache thudding in my chest. That miserable, icy depression that sunk me down.

For the first time, I wasn’t even foolish enough to think we could part amicably the way we had Amarantha’s court. For the first time, I didn’t hope there was some small portion of me she’d see as an enemy or that she might have found something of her time here worth coming back for.

Feyre’s feet shuffled lightly on the marble floor. I listened to her all the way from her bedroom.

“It’s been a week,” she said, a bold demand, no hesitations whatsoever. “Take me home.”

My cup went straight to my lips for a long sip. “Good morning, Feyre.”

“Take me home.”

Beneath my skin, my muscles, I felt my bones chip with shards of glass carving against them.

Feyre wore a set of teal and gold clothes set in a similar style to what she’d worn all week. She looked right at home in them even if she didn’t feel as such. The color pulled out the blue in her eyes. With the morning sun streaming through the open air ways, dancing on her skin and playing with the gold cuffs to her wrists and ankles... she was stunning.

_Not your anything._

“That color suits you.”

“Do you want me to say please? Is that it?”

The scowl on her face was what set me off.

“I want you to talk to me like a person. Start with ‘good morning’ and let’s see where it gets us.”

“Good morning.” It was the most obvious, dismissive _goodbye_ I’d ever heard in my life.

I smiled, having no other way to deal with it and Feyre seethed.

Good.

“Are you ready to face the consequences of your departure?”

Feyre went rigid like she hadn’t thought about the bad things that might be waiting for her in the flowery fields of Spring. But I had. I had thought of just about everything when it came to Feyre while I flew home.

The danger she was in.

The fight she riled in herself to keep what and whom she loved safe.

The glint in her eyes when she swore at me that made her whole face light up, even if it was born of anger.

The way her hair played against her neck and her fingers swam softly over her skin when she tucked a lock behind her ear.

The countless freckles on her face...

“It’s none of your business,” she said.

“Right. You’ll probably ignore it, anyway. Sweep it under the rug, like everything else.”

“No one asked for your opinion, Rhysand.”

“Rhysand?” It was worth a chuckle. I’d once said in front of her that only my enemies called me Rhysand. I wondered if she remembered or if it was just my ill-fated life led by the Cauldron that made her say it. “I give you a week of luxury and you call me Rhysand?”

“I didn’t ask to be here, or be given that week.”

“And yet look at you. Your face has some color - and those marks under your eyes are almost gone. Your mental shield is stellar, by the way.”

_Look at you as I do. Look at you and see the brilliance, I beg you._

Feyre looked at me, a crack in her eyes as if she could read the thoughts I hoarded away from her like gold. “Please take me home.”

I shrugged to hide the immeasurable pain aching inside me as I stood.

_You’re giving her back. Back to that beast. She’ll be paraded and pampered and bred for slaughter..._

“I’ll tell Mor you said good-bye.”

“I barely saw her all week.”

“She was waiting for an invitation - she didn’t want to pester you. I wish she extended me the same courtesy.”

And it was true. Mor had kept a careful distance all week, but she was never more than a few doors away from Feyre wherever she decided to reside each day as she woke and did her lessons. Mor whined about her isolation every night over dinner in between politics and the Illyrian pricks at our backs.

“No one told me,” Feyre said, but she looked slightly crestfallen.

“You didn’t ask. And why bother? Better to be miserable and alone.” I stepped forward as Feyre’s eyes swept over me. It was the most disheveled she’d ever seen me, even including the Mountain perhaps, and I doubted she had any idea why. I begged of her one final time. “Have you thought about my offer?”

“I’ll let you know next month.”

More than I’d expected. More than I deserved.

“I told you once, and I’ll tell you again.” I swallowed tightly. “I am not your enemy.”

Feyre met my gaze with steely determination dead set in her eyes. “And I told you once, so I’ll tell you again. You’re _Tamlin’s_ enemy. So I suppose that makes you mine.”

“Does it?”

We stepped nearer each other with every word.

“Free me from my bargain and let’s find out.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

_Both._

I held out my hand. “Shall we?”

Barely a heartbeat after she grabbed my hand, her enthusiasm slipping through cracked shields I didn’t feel like reprimanding her on, we were engulfed in darkness, carried by the fabric of the world towards the bright, sunny days of Spring. Feyre reached for me through the turbulence and though it was just as agonizing for her to cling to me as it has been when I’d winnowed her the first time, I savored those few moments holding her close. The only touches I might ever be allowed to spend with her.

She bolted the moment we touched down on those perfect little flagstones surrounded by perfectly manicured acres. Birds chirped in the branches of the huge oak looming over us.

This court could have been lovely, once.

But I grabbed Feyre’s wrist before she got more than a step away. My thumb ran over her wrist as Feyre looked up at me with confusion that threatened to boil over into something else if I didn’t let go soon.

I glanced at the mansion.

Then back to my mate and all that I was relinquishing her to.

 _Not your anything_.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Get your hand off me,” she said a near snarl.

I chuckled at that raging spirit only I seemed to elicit from her and let go. “I’ll see you next month.”

And with that, I let her be, and found myself once more ensconced in clouds of darkness and wind and smoke until I was dropped out of the skies and flying free over my city - my home.

Velaris.


	5. Fine is Great (Chapters 8-10)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 8-10 of ACOMAF from Rhys's POV in which Rhys angsts without Feyre for three weeks and then returns to the Spring Court for her second visit, only to find that she is reaching a breaking point.

Velaris.

There was no city on earth like it.

Beneath me fanned out in an array of color and movement stood my city - my home. It was early enough that not many had started their day yet, but I could smell the spices from the many restaurants as the Fae inhabitants began their day’s cooking, could see children running down the streets while their parents lingered inside pouring a final cup of tea, could hear the breeze rustle through trees and over the water as the city slowly woke up.

Weight sinking into my back as my wings flapped in great heaving strokes, some of the tension drained out of me.

Some - but not all.

I landed on the rooftop of my private townhouse ready to sleep for the next three weeks straight. I wouldn’t have the chance to so quickly, though, as I walked in and stumbled upon two hulking Illyrians in my living room.

Cassian’s large frame, outlined in corded muscle and rugged hair, leaned against my bookshelves with his arms crossed. The general didn’t look so friendly as his usual demeanor would suggest.

And Azriel - Azriel sat back quietly in one of the chairs that was open enough to accommodate his wings, elbows sat squarely on his knees while his chin rested pointedly atop his interlocked hands. Behind his back, I caught a glimpse of Truth-Teller, the silver hilt gleaming in the early morning sunlight coming through the window before a sly shadow slid over it and the sword disappeared from view.

That shadow snaked around his back, up his neck, and curled into one ear.

They were both still dressed in their leathers, beads of water from melted snow dripping over their boots over my carpets. They hadn’t bothered changing. Hell, the pricks had probably left after I had and knew just where to wait for me.

Azriel narrowed his eyes - at me. I bit back the urge to snarl.

“Aren’t you two supposed to be in the camps,” I said maintaining the leash on my voice. Feyre had just left. I was in no mood to be poked and prodded, even from them. I hadn’t told them I’d called the bargain in this week, but I could tell they knew.

“Funny,” Cassian said, always the one content to do the talking between them. “We could have asked the same thing of you. You look great, by the way. The shit-faced look really works for you.”

“I am not shit-faced-”

“Could have fooled me.”

“He isn’t drunk, Cassian,” Azriel said.

“No, but he might as well be.” Cassian pushed off the bookshelves and took two careful steps towards me. “Flying home in the middle of that gods-forsaken storm we had last night? Really, Rhys?”

I gritted my teeth. “How are you even in here?”

Azriel flicked his brow up. Offending him wasn’t easy to do and I’d just done it in the space of six words.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break your wings and splatter yourself all over the mountainside.”

“Cassian.” My cousin’s pert voice cut him off as Morrigan strode out from the kitchen with a glass of something that smelled wonderful burning in her hand. But even her voice sounded clipped.

Cassian ran a hand through his hair. “We’d have waken up to find your body in pieces and then we’d all have been utterly  _ fucked _ . What the hell is wrong with you?”

“ _ Nothing _ \-  _ nothing is wrong with me.” _

The words came out in a tense growl as I stepped forward to meet him, our wings flaring out in unison.

“That’s  _ enough _ ,” Mor said and it was enough that Azriel whipped his head to face her. “Rhys,” she said, handing me the glass and putting a hand on my chest to back me away from Cassian - the brother whom I loved and yet, stood by cursing all because I felt the need to lie about how shattered I’d become.

But I couldn’t let any of them know. Not the truth. Morrigan had already taken too much upon herself and she barely knew the half of what had happened in Amarantha’s court. I couldn’t bear the thought of adding that burden to my brothers too, not when -

_ Skin grazed his thighs, his stomach - one hand dragging over him up towards his chest, a blanket of thick gleaming hair that shone like dark rubies falling to meet him at his face as her lips parted in a decadent moan while she clenched around his - _

I closed my eyes, commanding my mind to will the nightmares away.

Azriel. Cassian.

_ Me _ .

It didn’t matter. I saw all of us on a near-nightly basis. Telling them would only make the horrors in the night too real in the daytime.

Slowly, with a steel grip so my hand wouldn’t shake, I brought the glass Mor had given me to my lips and drank feeling the wash of liquid burn down my throat and savoring the hint of pain.

My family was watching me when I opened my eyes. “I appreciate the concern,” I said throwing every ounce of sincerity I had in to my voice so they’d know I meant it, “but I am fine.”

“Oh sure. Fine is good - fine is great,” Cassian said with the most sarcastic, shit-eating grin I’d ever seen on him. I tried to hold his gaze, but my eyes betrayed me when my gaze flicked away to Azriel.

The Shadowsinger stood. “Tell us what to do.”

Not a request for information. Not a plea to force me into the light. Azriel knew darkness the way darkness knew itself, was cut from the same cloth and swallowed whole by it to whatever end.

“Go visit Tarquin.”

“The Summer Court?” Mor looked skeptical at the instruction.

“Yes - the Summer Court.” My gaze went back to Azriel. “Tell me what you see.”

Azriel checked a quick glance at Cassian before nodding at me and walking towards the open door where he held back. Azriel never  _ held back _ from anything, especially not an order.

Cassian rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh. “Do I get special orders too?” he chided, but the bite was gone from his voice.

“Cassian-” Mor started.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I suppose to some degree I deserve even if you are a filthy bastard, Cass.”

Cassian released a breath. “That’s more like it. Rhys,” and he stepped towards me, clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Why didn’t you just tell us she was here?”

_ Because I love her. I love her so much, it’s going to kill me and I didn’t want us to lose each other all over again. Not me or her or you or Az or Mor or any of us ever again. _

_ Because I am weak and I do not know how to be strong. _

“Because she holds the key,” I said. “And I didn’t want to let that information out until I knew exactly what would be within our reach to do with it.” The use of  _ our _ instead of  _ my _ seemed to appease him, though his look remained questioning. “She’ll be back in three weeks. I’ll know more then.”

Cassian sized me up and his regard was painful for me to look at even as I held my own and lied about all the ways I was failing him - failing myself. Finally, he sneered. “Got any more of that drink, Mor?”

“Oh, I’m sure I can find something,” she crooned. “Why?”

“Because I think Rhys needs to feel just as shit-faced as he looks.”

“I’m tired-”

“So am I.” Mor produced the bottle - whiskey - out of thin air and handed it over to Cassian, my brother who would not let me fall, would stand by me when I was at my lowest and allow me to pretend I was okay. “Cheers, brother - to you and the girl.”

We clinked glasses. “Now drink,  _ you filthy bastard _ .”

Mor scowled and walked towards the guest room she enjoyed occupying as the only person privileged with the right of staying here or winnowing directly in, muttering something about  _ men _ under her breath as she went.

We took our shots and when the alcohol had finished it’s initial detox, we found ourselves grinning at one another and I could tell that even without saying it, Cassian just somehow  _ knew _ , maybe even about everything.

When I looked at the doorway, Azriel was gone.

* * *

Feyre.

Now that she had returned miraculously to my life, there was no more denying her. She consumed my thoughts, my dreams, and all of my nightmares to the point that I stayed at the townhouse to sleep so the others wouldn’t see how unraveled I’d become in her wake.

And in return, I took up no space whatsoever in her thoughts. Her mind had gone eerily quiet, her mental shields so thick that most days I could have questioned her very existence.

She was as silent as the grave.

And it terrified me beyond reason.

It quickly became a habit, a pattern practiced over and over again as I ticked down the days to that blessed week I could bring her back.

Every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to bed, and as few times in between as I could stomach it, I would reach out and caress what I could of that bond between us just to make sure it was still there - that  _ she _ was still there. The most worrisome part of it being that without the mate bond between us and the bargain, I didn’t think I would have been able to feel her  _ at all _ .

I had no idea if she was okay. But I concentrated on the fact that if she was strong enough to hold me out so well after only one week of training, she had to be doing okay. Perhaps my visit had been enough to scare her Tamlin shitless and force him to do  _ something _ for her, though I sincerely doubted it.

Azriel returned from The Summer Court a week after I’d sent him, not entirely long for one of his usual missions.

We met with Amren, the firedrake who coiled in her lair far from the House of Wind, refusing to live so high up on a rock when she could be nestled in her own private cave. My second was nothing if not fiercely reclusive.

Her narrow eyes that belonged more to a snake than a High Fae examined me more than my brother as Azriel reported. Most of the details were nothing new nor surprising to me, but there was plenty concerning the High Lord of Summer’s regimen and council that were of the utmost value to me.

“He’s mostly taken to repairs to the city thus far,” Azriel said.

“What of his treasure troves?”

Azriel expressed mild interest. “Nothing. What of them?”

“Does Tarquin seem interested in cataloguing them anytime soon?”

“No, he doesn’t. He’s too concerned with his people and keeping morale up now that the war is over. He takes to the streets daily.”

An uncomfortable feeling settled in my stomach. He was well loved then, Tarquin, if he was spending his days more often outside the palace of Adriata than within it. He had dreams, hopes for his people. It was the foremost reason I wanted his alliance - and friendship. And the foremost reason I hated driving a knife in his back.

“What about Cresseida, his other-”

Pain, blinding and inexhaustible, roared through my mind in endless supply. It was not of the physical variety as I felt Feyre’s thoughts crack open like an egg, her thoughts slipping freely down the bond to congeal in my head.

Tamlin was ripped apart from her viciously, shouting her name. Feyre only barely registered the shattering of furniture and the violence of color around her before magic exploded out of her skin.

Fear rattled through me, adrenaline screaming at me to winnow on the spot and interfere, but then I heard Tamlin barely rasp her name -  _ “Feyre” _ \- before her shields snapped back up perfectly in place. She probably wasn’t even aware they’d dropped and that I’d seen anything at all.

My vision shifted and I was left with Amren smirking over a glass of her usual poison while Azriel leaned ever so slightly towards me, his hands in a tight grip on the belt of his flying leathers.

I cleared my throat.

“What about Cresseida?” I asked again.

Azriel waited a few careful seconds before beginning. His face was thick with shadows. I didn’t have to tell him where to send them. “I think Cresseida fashions herself the High Lady of Summer. Tarquin seems equal parts amused and aggravated by it.”

I snorted. That little minx undoubtedly did see herself in charge.

But as Azriel plunged on, the details became increasingly muddled in my mind as all I saw - all I could here or think or feel - was Feyre.

* * *

Azriel reported nothing amiss, though it was evident that something had happened. But so long as Feyre was physically in one piece, I couldn’t do a damned thing and I wasn’t going to risk her decision to help me woo Tamlin’s alliance in a war with Hybern over my interference in her affairs with him.

The agitation that ensued the rest of the month scratched and clawed at my skin every day. It became harder and harder to control and I found myself longing for that week with her outside Velaris just so I wouldn’t have to hide it so much anymore.

That fact alone nearly gutted me to pieces - that even Velaris no longer felt like a safe and steady refuge.

The first real breath of air I drew was winnowing into those fields and flowers of Spring. I took to the exact spot under that oak tree where I had deposited Feyre upon her return trip. Tamlin’s wards were nothing to me now as I landed, his magic a complete failure next to how easily I ripped the wards apart.

They might as well have not been there in the first place.

I entered the manor and crept easily through it. I knew these walls well, even after centuries of distance between us. But even if I hadn’t known it, Feyre’s scent was a bait that I stalked after, guided by it right to her rooms like a beast hungering at the altar for a sacrifice.

My mate was in these rooms and when I stepped outside her door and came face to face with Tamlin, and that horrid scent of his sex mixed with hers oozed off of him in waves, a vicious feral grin spread over my lips.

Up until this point, I hadn’t allowed myself to entertain the idea of him with Feyre, not past the flashes of heat I’d sometimes receive in the middle of the night when Feyre was so uncontrolled underneath him, her arousal was enough to crack through my nightmares.

I hated those nights. Shoved them so far out of my thoughts I could pretend they weren’t there. Because every time I woke up with the faint sounds of her moans and his name on her lips ringing in my ears, it was an effort not to run to the toilets  _ myself _ and vomit.

There were several nights that I did.

But now standing here in front of their nest knowing that Tamlin  _ had _ her, all of her in all the ways that aggressive, primal male in me craved as her mate, knowing he didn’t damned deserve it... It was such a powerful blow that I wanted to rip his throat out as he had Amarantha’s and be done with it.

I chose my feline approach instead.

“I’ve come to collect,” I said cooly, allowing that wild grin of mine to seep over him. The snap of his face into his usual snarl was reward enough, nevermind the claws that peaked through his knuckles.

“Get out,” he said sharply. I walked closer, right in front of the door.  _ Her _ door, I noted tracing the scent off of him down to his room where hers did not follow. “I’ll say it one more time-”

“You can say it as often as you like,” I said, cutting him off. “It will not change anything.” I dipped my head and allowed my grin to stretch, taunting him every second. “You know that.”

The door creaked suddenly open. My eyes slid to Feyre and, and-

The mask slipped.

Feyre stood wrapped in nothing but a blanket. Though Tamlin was near naked himself, he looked like a god standing next to her, put together and groomed.

But Feyre - oh, my Feyre.

_ Not your anything, look at her -  _ smell _ her. Smell  _ him _. _

Feyre’s entire body was so weak and thin, one breath from me and even across the room, she would have fallen over from the light force. I could count the ribs down her chest, could see her hip bones jutting out at her waist sharply. And her eyes rang painfully hollow, rimmed with red and such hopeless exhaustion.

My mate.

My mate.

_ My mate, my mate, mate - he’d fucked my mate and left her for dead _ .

“Feyre,” I said, her name emanating in a heavily restrained gasp. “Are you running low on food here?”

My eyes snapped to Tamlin who had the audacity to feign ignorance. “What?”

In my mind, I imagined that moment where he’d charged Amarantha and sank his teeth into her flesh. Only I wanted him up against that wall, my wings pinning his useless hide against the stone while my talons ripped into his chest and the fangs of my beast snapped his head in two until he was beyond recognition.

But Feyre loved him.

For her, I would not cave.

For her, I had to be strong.

_ For her, for her - always for  _ her.

“Let’s go,” I said, extending my hand out to her, but Tamlin with his endless nerve stepped straight into my path barring me from her.  _ “Get out,” _ he said, pointing towards the stairs I’d just come up. “She’ll come to you when she’s ready.”

Tamlin undoubtedly thought he was brave, protecting his lady love as he dutifully should have. With cold, dead malice in my eyes that could have tossed an ocean, I reached mere inches in front of me and flicked a non-existent piece of dust off his shoulder. Feyre’s mind cracked wide open.

She was... awed.

_ Had Tamlin’s teeth been inches from my throat, I would have bleated in panic _ .

My eyes shot to her riding that wave of crimson anger. “No, you wouldn’t have,” I said and her eyes went wide. “As far as your memory serves me, the last time Tamlin’s teeth were near your throat, you slapped him across the face.”

Her shields shot into place at once.

_ “Shut your mouth and get out.” _ Somehow, Tamlin found even more space to occupy between Feyre and me.

I took one step back - just  _ one _ .

My hands went smoothly into my pockets. “You really should have your wards inspected. Cauldron knows what other sort of riffraff might stroll in here as easily as I did.”

Feyre looked positively scandalized. But as I looked her over, again taking in her starved appearance and feeling the depression roll out of her despite her mental shields, I wasn’t going to budge an ounce until we were safely back in the Night Court.

“Put some clothes on,” I said, to which she promptly bared her teeth at me and slammed the door shut on my face after Tamlin followed her into the room.

At least she had fight in her still. That was a good sign I didn’t deserve.

The sound of opening and closing drawers met my ears in between their hurried conversation.

_ “How did he get in here?” _

_ “I don’t know. He just - it’s just part of whatever game he’s playing.” _

_ “If war is coming, maybe we’d be better served trying to mend things.” _

I froze, the comment such an unexpected gift. I hadn’t been sure if I’d really expected her to try talking to him about what I’d said. The fact that she had -

_ “I’ll start mending things the day he releases you from your bargain.” _

_ “Maybe he’s keeping the bargain so that you’ll attempt to listen to him.” _

_ “Feyre, why do you need to know these things? Is it not enough for you to recover in peace? You earned that for yourself. You  _ earned _ it. I relaxed the number of sentries here; I’ve been trying... trying to be better about it. So leave the rest of it-” _

A pause.

_ “This isn’t the time for this conversation.” _

Of course it wasn’t.

Of course.

Baldly, I coughed in the hallway - very, very audibly so.

The door opened by a moment later and there stood Feyre.

_ Not your anything _ .

She glanced at me with little concern, the displeasure written all over her face. But still, she had asked him...

It was something I had only hoped and prayed for and it was... a start.

Casually, I offered her my hand. She took it, only for Tamlin to promptly appear and push my hand down. For the first time, genuine desperation overtook everything about him from the look he gave me right down to the pitiful begging in his voice.

“You end her bargain right here, right now, and I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Feyre said. I could both hear and feel how his offer shocked her. Even she knew it was a grim, foolish decision.

Lucky for them both, I was not one for fool’s errands.

“I already have everything I want,” I said. And it was true. There was nothing short of Feyre offering herself wholly to me that could have possibly tempted me to accepting him and we all knew that was never going to happen.

As casually as I’d flicked at him moments ago, I stepped around Tamlin and found Feyre’s hand. We disappeared into a blink of dust.


	6. Fight It (Chapter 11)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 11 of ACOMAF from Rhys's POV in which Rhys deals with a dejected, dying Feyre during her second visit to the Night Court and finally glimpses the first flickers of her many powers.

I didn’t even wait for the darkness to clear before my anger at Tamlin shifted into the offensive to see where Feyre was at.

And Feyre, I felt as I set her down and saw the agony in her eyes, was dying.

“What the hell happened to you?” I said.

“Why don’t you just look inside my head?”

Nothing.

No emotion. No sting. No spite in her voice.

Nothing.

“Where’s the fun in that?” I winked for good measure, but Feyre only slowly turned away from me eyeing the stairs that would lead to her room. I’d never seen her this deflated. “No shoe throwing this time?”

Again, no answer. This time she really did move for the stairs, ignoring the intention behind my words that was plain as day.

My skin crawled. My insides twisted horribly in pain. My heart wrenched.

My mate was dying and she didn’t  _ care _ . Feyre did not care. Not for me. Not for her. Barely ever for Tamlin any longer.

All that power gifted to me since birth - the killing power, the darkness of Night, the ability to bend space and travel through thought and none of it made one damned difference because I was going to lose her.

My muscles trembled beneath my skin aching to let out some kind of release that would catch her, break her fall, but I was so  _ fucking useless _ to do anything. And she was so horribly pale...

“Eat breakfast with me,” I sputtered. In the five seconds Feyre had her back turned, my mask was so far removed it had never existed in the first place. I was so absolutely unhinged.

The fabric of her top fell over one of her shoulders as she turned to face me again, revealing how pronounced her collarbones were. And still her voice sounded dead when she spoke.

“Don’t you have other things to deal with?”

“Of course I do,” I said, shrugging as casually as I could to maintain some kind of stasis for her because my words were about to fail me. “I have so many things to deal with that I’m sometimes tempted to unleash my power across the world and wipe the board clean. Just to buy me some damned peace.”

Perhaps, I dared hope, offering her that one piece of myself that let her know I was just as wretched and twisted inside as she was would help her understand me more.

But Feyre didn’t move, so I yielded all to her.

I grinned, nothing short of my usual arrogance even as my chest heaved to cover how badly I wanted to shake, and bowed at the waist deep and low as only she could merit. “But I’ll always make time for you,” I said.

Sweet, merciful relief flooded me so strongly when Feyre motioned for me to lead her to breakfast that I could have released a sob had I not wanted to trouble her.

_ Just stay _ I begged inside myself.  _ Just stay. Just live. Feyre, please just live. _

Her feet dragged across the floor as we made it to that heavy breakfast table well laid out with food. “I felt a spike of fear this month through our lovely bond. Anything exciting happen at the wondrous Spring Court?”

It was very easily too testy of a question to throw at her given her current emotional state, but I had to know - had to be sure Tamlin wasn’t going to drive the knife into her heart himself.

“It was nothing,” was all she said.

Nothing.

Because the shouting, the crying, the fracturing world around her - meant  _ nothing _ to her now.

And it was his fault.

Feyre looked at me, then quickly away. I didn’t let the rage stop from pouring out of my gaze, a rage so strong the depths of that vicious court beneath me churned in agony.

Feyre’s voice turned icy, the first real flicker of emotion, as she sank into her seat and I joined her. “If you know, why even ask about it?”

_ Because I adore you, and I abhor the thought that you would suffer and not tell me, even if it is  _ me.

“Because these days,” I said, my voice somehow impossibly smaller than what I fashioned for my persona, “all I hear through that bond is nothing. Silence. Even with your shields up rather impressively most of the time, I should be able to  _ feel _ you. And yet I don’t. Sometimes I’ll tug on the bond only to make sure you’re still alive.”

The magic inside my soul twitched as I hit the words, denying the flood of memories of the last time she died. It was complete torment to consider it happening again.

“And then one day, I’m in the middle of an important meeting when terror blasts through the bond. All I get are glimpses of you and him - and then nothing. Back to silence. I’d like to know what caused such a disruption.”

Feyre casually ignored me as she piled food atop her plate and merely said, “It was an argument, and the rest is none of your concern.”

My next words snapped out of me quickly.

“Is it why you look like your grief and guilt and rage are eating you alive, bit by bit?”

“Get out of my head.”

“Make me.  _ Push _ me out.” The words were so pained off my tongue. I just wanted her to react, to do something, to acknowledge the problem, but it was like pulling teeth. I vaguely wondered how far down she hid the truth even from herself, what it must really be like to be inside her own head. Did my own grief and burdens even compare?

But then I thought of Cassian. And Azriel. My family who had watched me shoot into the sky in the middle of a storm that Cassian was right, could have killed me. I hadn’t cared then. Feyre didn’t care now.

So they pushed me to care. Until I saw it even if I lied daily on the surface about every single emotion I felt. But still, they made me care.

Feyre  _ needed _ to care.

“You dropped your shield this morning - anyone could have walked right in.”

Her eyes met my challenge... and willingly threw in the towel. “Where’s Mor?” she asked, her voice fading.

_ Working underneath this fucking rock like I asked her to when I should have found an excuse to drag her back here for the week. _

But this was about Feyre.

“Away. She has duties to attend to. Is the wedding on hold, then?”

She stopped chewing for the briefest moment and barely whispered, “Yes.”

“I expected an answer more along the lines of, ‘ _ Don’t ask stupid questions you already know the answer to,’ _ or my timeless favorite, ‘ _ Go to hell _ .’“

She didn’t say anything. Feyre - fuck, please say  _ something _ .

She reached for a tartlet on one of the shining silver platters and her eyes flickered over my hands when darkness shot out of me reaching for her, ready to claw my way across the brief distance that separated us between our plates.

“Did you give my offer any thought?”

I watched her while she ate. Ate her way through an entire plate of food like she had never eaten anything in her life before she answered me.

“I’m not going to work with you.”

And just like that, the Night sucked me in.

“And why, Feyre, are you refusing me?”

“I’m not going to be a part of this war you think is coming,” she said, an edge of defensiveness lacing her tone as she avoided my gaze pushing fruit around her plate. “You say I should be a weapon, not a pawn - they seem like the same to me. The only difference is who’s wielding it.”

“I want your help, not to manipulate you,” I snapped. This was about my  _ court _ , not abusing her in the same selfish way Tamlin and these other cursed High Lords would seek to. Feyre’s eyes shot to me immediately, cutting through my anger the way an Illyrian blade could cut through diamonds.

“You want my help because it’ll piss off Tamlin.”

My shoulders gasped. Shadows swarmed. I could have been my very own Shadowsinger for how entirely encased I was, but nothing could stop the endless heartache wrenching through me as word after word, stare after stare, silence after silence, she cut me down and refused to even exist outside the grief I  _ knew _ was lingering just below the surface of her thoughts.

“Fine,” I said after several long moments during which I gathered myself into the High Lord who sacrificed all for his court, for history. “I dug that grave myself, with all I did Under the Mountain. But I need your help.”

When Feyre  _ again _ offered me less than nothing, I gave her everything - the barest, most raw truths of who I was.

“I was a prisoner in her court for nearly fifty years.” Feyre raised her eyes to me tentatively with each word. “I was tortured and beaten and fucked until only telling myself who I was, what I had to protect, kept me from trying to find a way to end it. Please - help me keep that from happening again. To Prythian.”

We stared at each other for a long while. I couldn’t feel my own heart beat once.

And when even  _ begging _ at her feet was not enough, Feyre resumed eating without so much as a backwards glance.

We spent the rest of breakfast in resounding silence.

* * *

She didn’t come to dinner.

She didn’t come to breakfast the following morning.

I was half a step from going up to her room just sit by her bed and keep watch lest I go insane waiting for her when I felt the bond stir as she woke up. Patiently I waited and at length, she came to the study where I waited with her day’s lessons.

Feyre did not return my amused expression as she entered the room and I motioned her towards a set of sentences I hoped would bait her. “Copy these sentences,” I said, not bothering with hellos. We seemed to be past that now.

Feyre didn’t bother arguing. Just sat down, picked up the papers, and read, bored to tears.

_ “Rhysand is a spectacular person. Rhysand is the center of my world. Rhysand is the best lover a female can ever dream of.” _

Every single word was pronounced perfectly, read with flawless accuracy and not once did she stutter. Even better was her penmanship when she copied them in exact measure on the clean pages I’d set out.

She shoved the papers at me and my claws sprang out, pouncing at her mind and not bothering to be gentle about it - but that wall of adamant greeted them and they sprang back at once.

I blinked at her.

“You practiced.”

Feyre stood up and didn’t bother looking at me as she walked away, done for the day with her lessons, with  _ me _ .

“I had nothing better to do.

* * *

_ She won’t even see me. _

_ I don’t blame her. _

_ Not helping. _

_ What do you want me to do about it? I’m stuck here for the next two weeks dealing with Keir and weeding out the cretins who defected and who stayed. You did that or did you forget? _

I cursed, my head hitting the backboard of my bed as snow fell outside the windows over those glorious mountains.

_ What do I do? It is not just that she won’t see me. She won’t even see herself. _

_ Give her space. I could use your help here anyway and the peace and quiet without you strutting around with your wings in her face every five seconds might help her relax. _

_ I do not strut. _

Mor didn’t reply.

_ Fine. I’ll be there in the morning. _

_ Good. _

I had just sat up from the bed when a second sheet of paper fluttered through the air in front of me, Mor’s curling script blazing upon it with insistence.

_ Bring those chocolate chili muffins with you. _

I rolled my eyes and knew wherever my cousin was, she was poised on a throne with a gleeful triumph on her face.

Since Feyre wasn’t in the habit of speaking with me, I didn’t bother her with goodbyes. I perched outside her door in the early hours of the morning, so early it could have still been considered night, and left a stack of books at her door with a note.

_ I have business elsewhere. The house is yours. Send word if you need me. _

Six days.

Not one word.

Not so much as a flicker.

After the first night when I woke up drenched in sweat, Night consuming the room as Amarantha’s face beamed at me while she twisted Feyre’s neck until I felt every single bone break along her spine, I took to winnowing to the townhouse in Velaris when it was time to sleep.

I didn’t tell Mor.

* * *

Feyre sat in a stream of golden sunlight reading for most of her final day. Only reading.

Just like before, her skin had a little extra color to it making her features more relaxed. But since she had come here worse off than her first trip, her recuperation only seemed to catch her up so much.

I shoved away the thought of how bad it would be the next time she visited.

Still, she seemed almost peaceful sitting there, her book open contentedly in her lap. I didn’t bother to notice if it was one I’d chosen for her or one she’d found on her own as I approached.

“Since you seem hell-bent on a sedentary lifestyle, I thought I’d go one step further and bring your food to you.”

Feyre looked up at me as I slid between the cushioned chairs and set two plates piled with food on the table in front of us, taking a seat adjacent her. Her eyes widened at the food ravenously.

“Thank you,” she said.

Simply.

Plainly.

_ Empty, empty, empty _ .

I laughed, just a small laugh, hoping this could be played off, but... “ _ Thank you? _ Not ‘ _ High lord and servant?’ _ Or: ‘ _ Whatever it is you want, you can go shove it up your ass, Rhysand.’ _ ? How disappointing,” I finished with a click of my tongue.

But even after a week - a week that had earned me civility and a polite greeting of sorts that didn’t result in her walking away from me again - Feyre didn’t say anything. Only reached for the plate.

I drained.

My magic reacted on instinct, took over for me where I could no longer help myself and I was willing to let it.

A light current of air dragged the plate from Feyre’s grasp and when she pushed ahead a little more, it jumped back again.

“Tell me what to do,” I said. If I had to flat out beg her for the answer to helping her, so be it. “Tell me what to do to help you.”

Feyre kept still as my power continued to pour out of me with each word. I couldn’t have helped it if I’d tried. “Months and months, and you’re still a ghost. Does no one there ask what the hell is happening? Does your High Lord simply not care?”

Feyre’s eyes glittered with ice as she spoke with enough control, I only just caught the frost behind her words. “He’s giving me space to sort it out.”

Space.

Space like I’d given her all week and look where that had landed us.

If Tamlin wouldn’t help her -

“Let me help you. We went through enough Under the Mountain-”

Feyre nearly jumped out of her seat at the mere mention of that place and I leaned in closer to her, just desperate to feel her close in some way, close enough to know there was still someone in there who heard me even if she tried so hard not to.

“She wins,” I gasped. “That bitch wins if you let yourself fall apart.”

_ She wins if any of us do _ .

There were nights during which that thought alone was all that kept me on the fringes of reality. When my face became my brothers and I woke with the sound of Feyre’s neck snapping in my ears, the only thing pulling me back this frustrating idea that Amarantha would want me to cave to it - all of it.

The nightmares, both in sleep and waking.

Feyre’s uncontrollable vomiting, her fear of who she was.

Even Tamlin and his inability to stop his shortcomings from dominating his every move right down to the claws he lived and died by daily.

We would all let her win if we didn’t fight. If Feyre didn’t -

_ Conversation over. _

Her walls collapsed and rebuilt so quickly, the words flying through the bond between us like an arrow to a dear. She grabbed her book, content to starve if it meant denying the truths I flung at her constantly, and I snarled at her openly.

“Like hell it is.”

_ Something - just give me something, I beg of you. _

Her book snapped shut. That one  _ tiny _ little act had a tide of glittering, towering rage gushing beneath her skin - a rage that was icy and sharp as glass, piercing as -

_ Snow. _

Feyre hurled the book at me before I could blink and I deflected it, but not before I saw the frost covering the bindings - and her hands. My magic reacted instinctively to hers - whether because she was my mate or purely from the thrill of sensing someone of equal capability within reach, someone to play with and live by, I didn’t know.

Maybe it was both.

And it thrilled me to no end.

“Good,” I said, a bit ragged. “What else do you have, Feyre?”

She glared at me as that ice on her hands melted into molten fire, untempered and hot as the burning sun of Autumn. Beron would fuck himself if he knew...

Feyre looked at me and she knew what I was feeling, could see the sense of relief taking over as the shadows at my back retreated and the darkness surrounding us filled with stars instead of that endless, empty void.

_ She’s alive. She’s alive... _

The flames on her hands disappeared. I didn’t care how she did it, pleased enough in the fact that she had at all.

“Any time you need someone to play with,” I said, pushing the plate towards her and prepared to offer her much more than she might have realized she would one day need, possibly even  _ want _ if she were to ask, “whether it’s during our marvelous week together or otherwise, you let me know.”

Feyre cleaned her plate faster than I’d ever seen her before.

The next morning, Tamlin’s greeting was more an order I might give in the Illyrian camps than a gentle  _ hello _ to someone he loved.

“Get inside,” he practically barked at Feyre. She made no move to argue, but I could already feel the sinking weight creeping into her gut as I set her down and took a step back.

But Tamlin didn’t know what I knew, did not understand that Feyre could be a soldier when she wanted to be, one who was deadly and focused and determined.

I turned that same authority on her that Tamlin enacted, but I filled it with purpose for her to cling to, direction for her to consider, a challenge for her to rise to rather than die from when the world tried to suffocate her.

“Fight it,” I said, a cold gleam in my eye.

Feyre stepped back towards this man she shared a bed with, this man and this court whom she loved. I didn’t have to wonder what it would feel like for her if she let herself die for that man and that court that did not love her back in the same way, sometimes did not love her at all or perhaps too greatly. For Feyre, I already felt that death every single day.

Leaving her to whatever she should choose, I disappeared and returned home without her - this woman whom I loved to the very ends of the earth.


	7. Take Me With You (Chapters 12-13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 12-13 of ACOMAF from Rhys's POV in which Rhys and Mor rescue Feyre from the Spring Court after Tamlin locks her in the house and Rhys decides to take her with him to Velaris.

The screaming - the screaming was horrific.

Barely a week passed by and on a day that should have been otherwise bright and shining with sun in the days of Spring, I felt Feyre descend into the bowels of hell itself.

Her mental shields were still perfectly in tact. I slammed against them in a rough collision as they kept me out of her mind.

But the screaming. It was agonizing and it never stopped. Over and over her cries came cracking the sun in two so the moon might take over and even then, there would be no light.

A brief flash of darkness and flame and ice combined into a netherworld filled with chains and ragged breath in her ears that sent shivers down her spine until she bled and her cries greeted me across the bond.

_ He’d trapped her - locked her up. _

I grabbed my cousin’s hand, allowed the vision to fill her up for herself until I heard her breath cut off with a choke, and then winnowed.

And I thanked the fucking Cauldron as I went that I had Morrigan with me on the spot.

We landed directly on the doorstep of the manor. I was hit at once with an absurdly thin shield veiling the mansion like mist over a meadow - there, but damn near easy to move through.

I sliced with barely an inkling of thought and Mor  _ moved _ with swiftness and surety. “Get her out,” I snarled and sent one final thought - a location she was already well aware of - before I winnowed, leaving before I could make the situation much, much worse.

The Summer Court was welcoming to me as I landed among its rolling, grassy plains far, far from the cities its High Lord would find me. I only hoped the Court would be half this welcoming to me when I visited with invitation - and I would. Otherwise, Tarquin was in for a far nastier shock than he realized and I hated to do it to him.

Mor took less than ten minutes.

She appeared with the warm Summer heat baring down on her like a halo - an angel of mercy and deliverance carrying Feyre in her arms. Feyre clung to her, her fingers digging in to her skin and clothes unwilling to let go.

A snarl beat out of me before I could help myself. Seeing Feyre like that, so utterly wounded and exhausted from what that mongrel had done to her - there was no escaping that kind of simultaneous wrath and relief.

“I did everything by the book,” Mor said. She held Feyre towards me and I took her into my arms. Cauldron, she felt so small, so fragile, but so, so vital. Like she was meant to be next to me all along.

But she was struggling, barely even able to breath when I wanted to see her stand and never, never fall again.

“Then we’re done here,” I said.

Wind raged and I allowed my darkness to descend upon Feyre in full force as we winnowed. But not that same terrifying darkness that she had lived and suffered in for so long. Rather, I applied it like a balm, the soothing quiet of night that finds a stillness and a shelter for the soul when all around crumbles into dust and ash.

Feyre fell into sleep before we even landed at the palace.

* * *

I watched her sleep. For hours and hours she slept, never stirring once.

Feyre kept preternaturally still. If it hadn’t been for the steady sound of her heart beating that my fae senses allowed me the mercy of hearing, I would have thought she was dead. It was enough to force my gaze out the open windows and on to the snowy mountains colored with morning light, lest I find myself slipping back onto that marble floor where I had screamed her name over, and over, and over as Amarantha thundered above us both.

Eight days. She’d been left there for eight days and I had let her - let her drown. What the hell would have happened if it’d gone, if I’d left her there the full three weeks with that -

The distinct sound of her swallowing met my ears and my head snapped to her attention. She blinked her eyes open wearily, looking like she needed an eternity more of sleep.

But she was  _ okay _ . Alive, if nothing else. And she was safe - free, Mor had said.

I felt the threads inside me that had been spun around the bobbin, coiled far too tight, unravel across the floor all at once.

_ She was alive. _

“What happened?” They sounded like her first spoken words ever, they came out so cracked and dry. She vaguely thought of screaming, her shields lowered and for once, I didn’t care one bit.

“You  _ were _ screaming,” I said. “You also managed to scare the shit out of every servant and sentry in Tamlin’s manor when you wrapped yourself in darkness and they couldn’t see you.”

I remembered that darkness. Feyre did too. It rivaled my own and to think, she hadn’t even trained.

The thought presided over us as Feyre choked out in tense anxiety, “Did I hurt any-”

“No,” I said immediately. “Whatever you did, it was contained to you.”

“You weren’t-”

“By law and protocol, things would have become very complicated and very messy if I had been the one to walk into that house and take you.” I stretched my legs out in front of the chair, trying to sink into some of the relief I was now allowed to feel, and watched Feyre study me curiously. “Smashing that shield was fine, but Mor had to go in on her own two feet, render the sentries unconscious through her own power, and carry you over the border to another court before I could bring you here. Or else Tamlin would have free rein to march his forces into my lands to reclaim you. And as I have no interest in an internal war, we had to do everything by the book.”

Her face scrunched, a pause, but then - “When I go back...”

I rubbed at my temples. I wasn’t ready for this part. Hours waiting and pleading silently with the Cauldron to let her wake up, let her be  _ fine _ , and now I would have to stand the chance she’d still rather be with  _ Tamlin _ after everything than here with me.

“As your presence here isn’t part of our monthly requirement, you are under no obligation to go back... unless you wish to.”

Not a statement, but a question.

Feyre did not offer a  _ yes _ or a  _ no _ , but her reply spoke volumes. “He locked me in that house,” she said with pained breath.

So weak. So broken. So damned  _ exhausted _ was my mate all because of that vile and wicked  _ beast _ .

Shadows danced around me seeking vengeance. “I know,” I said, each word costing me a new price I had not known I could physically and emotionally pay. “I felt you. Even with your shields up - for once.”

Feyre stared hard at me. “I have nowhere else to go.”

That she could say that - could even  _ think _ it after our time together, despite it all. Feyre -

But it was just as much a question and a begging as my own had been. She...  _ wanted _ to stay. I could feel it. My darkness settled.

“Stay here for however long you want. Stay here forever, if you feel like it.”

“I - I need to go back at some point.”

“Say the word, and it’s done.”

_ Say the word and seal my death along with your own. Say the word, and I’ll die with you. It’s your choice. Whatever you want. No matter to what end it be, I will not only let you do it, but I’ll keep you company while you go. _

Feyre didn’t speak, but finally - finally, she offered her silence for contemplation rather than punishment.

“I made you an offer when you first came here: help me, and food, shelter, clothing... All of it is yours.” I’d have given it to her regardless. But Feyre’s thoughts jumped towards beggary and I brushed that notion right off. “Work for me. I owe you, anyway. And we’ll figure out the rest day by day, if need be.”

Feyre guarded her silence, but not her thoughts. She turned towards the window, considered those sleeping giants in the snow, moved to see past them towards those sweeping hills and valleys where her love had buried itself in thorn covered roses. There was a longing for the closure she might only get in going back...

But even greater was the ache, that terrible burden of knowing that a return to Tamlin’s arms would leave her in shackles when she pulled away.

I almost didn’t quite believe the words I was hearing when she turned back to me. “I’m not going back.” Cauldron, I never -  _ never _ thought she’d say it. She wasn’t choosing me, but she was choosing against  _ him _ . “Not - not until I figure things out.”

And though she was certain of her decision, it did not escape my notice how her touch brushed over that bare spot around her finger where a beautiful, burgeoning emerald had once sat, it’s own form of imprisonment.

Even that small symbol, too close to Amarantha...

“Drink it,” I said, summoning a biting cup of peppermint and licorice tea.

We sat in comfortable silence like we never had before as Feyre drank and mused herself to death. When she felt enough time had passed or maybe it was just that her tea was getting cold, the questions spilled out of her.

Always her curiosity would save her in the end.

“The darkness,” she said. “Is that... part of the power  _ you _ gave me?”

“One would assume so,” I said, successfully masking the considerable degree of pride I took in saying so.

Feyre drained the remainder of her tea in one go. “No wings?”

“If you inherited some of Tamlin’s shape-shifting, perhaps you can make wings of your own.”

Feyre danced off the shiver raking over her and a shower of pleasant curiosity bloomed. “And the other High Lords? Ice - that’s Winter. That shield I once made of hardened wind - who did that come from? What might the others have given me? Is - is winnowing tied to any one of you in particular?”

Ice, wind, winnowing - not to mention the flames and darkness. She was considerably gifted and that was just the start of it. “Wind? The Day Court, likely. And winnowing - it’s not confined to any court. It’s wholly dependent on your own reserve of power - and training. And as for the gifts you got from everyone else... That’s for you to find out, I suppose.”

“I should have known your goodwill would wear off after a minute.”

_ Beautiful - she’s do damned beautiful. Sharp and cutting as all her abilities spoke to. _

I chuckled, a low dark murmur. Standing was near painful from the hours I’d passed, even worse that I had to go. I’d left Cassian and Azriel in a shit show of a meeting that Mor was probably failing to clean up as they pawed at her for attention and explanation.

But Feyre looked like sleep would be a welcome reprieve to her muddled thoughts.

“Rest a day or two, Feyre,” I said. Her brow rose ever so slightly. “Then take on the task of figuring out everything else. I have business in another part of my lands; I’ll be back by the end of the week.”

We watched each other for several long moments. The sunlight played delicately on her hair in a soft pink and amber hue that made her eyes stand out like crystals. Those little freckles of her dark against her pale skin.

She looked better already, vastly so.

With a short nod, I turned to leave, but Feyre’s voice caught me at once, a startled whine that stopped me dead in my tracks. “Take me with you,” she said.

I turned, the gossamer curtains folding around me as I stared at her disbelieving and stammered the first excuse I could find to affirm she didn’t really want to go with me. How could she?

“You should rest,” I said.

“I’ve rested enough.” She stood and probably thought the world was spinning from the way she struggled for balance, but she found it quickly enough before she was staring me down with an absolute plea in her blue-grey eyes. “Wherever you’re going, whatever you’re doing - take me along. I’ll stay out of trouble. Just... Please.”

In my wildest dreams, if I’d been told I’d be standing on this threshold at some point, ready to tip right over the edge of a jagged, rocky cliff from whence there is no going back, with Feyre steadfast at my side, I would have laughed so hard at the Cauldron for delivering yet another cruel lie unto my door.

But Feyre was absolutely serious. She wanted to come, to be and to  _ do _ . Which meant, she’d have to know...  _ everything _ . And even if it was Feyre, it was such an enormous secret.

And one, I realized standing there looking at my mate in the morning sun, that I trusted her with completely.

I stepped nearer, as near as I dared, and made absolutely certain she was aware of how serious this decision was. “If you come with me, there is no going back. You will not be allowed to speak of what you see to anyone outside of my court. Because if you do, people will die -  _ my _ people will die. So if you come, you will have to lie about it forever; if you return to the Spring Court, you  _ cannot _ tell anyone there what you see, and who you meet, and what you will witness. If you would rather not have that between you and - your friends, then stay here.”

She didn’t even have to breathe, have to blink, before she’d considered and knew the surety of her answer. And I believed her wholly in it too. “Take me with you,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone what I see. Even - them.”

Those words were a glorious, burdenless freedom I’d longed to feel. Not even for me, but all for her.

Her choice. Her actions. Her own empowerment.

A soft smile spread over my lips that was so unlike the feline grins meant to bait her that Feyre was used to seeing. “We leave in ten minutes. If you want to freshen up, go ahead.”

“Where are we going?”

My smile widened into a grin of immense pleasure, pleasure I hadn’t realized I felt until I said the startling revelation out loud. “To Velaris - the City of Starlight.”

I was taking my mate home.

* * *

Feyre looked like a new woman when she met me at the main atrium gleaming in all its moonstone and light. She wore a fresh set of Night Court attire and she smelled exquisite. Her bones still protruded at sharp angles here and there, but the lightness in her step did wonders for it. One day, I’d see her through it - all of it.

“That was fifteen minutes,” I teased casually, offering her my hand.

We exploded into the night of stars and embers, shooting, hurtling towards that sea and citrus of home. Our hands held tightly onto one another, our skin burrowing into skin, our touch anchoring the hold until we landed in my townhouse’s main foyer.

She looked down first at the red carpet, traced patterns in its intricacies that led her towards dark wooden bookshelves lining the walls at every inch, the blazing marble fireplace, and the sweeping dining set.

Nothing in my life compared to that moment of feeling Feyre step the furthest yet into my personal life - into  _ me _ \- and feeling her walls stay down for it, watching her sink into the fabrics and colors and tattered corners in ways she never had in the Spring Court.

She  _ liked _ it. More than liked it, possibly.

I let go of her hand and stepped back, enjoying the way a stream of sunlight poured over her face in an intimate bath.

At long, long last, Feyre was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The journey with Rhys isn't quite over. If you'd like to continue reading my version of Rhys in ACOMAF, it's linked as subsequent parts in a series to this fic through Chapter 56 of ACOMAF. Parts 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, & 3.1 continue the fun with our bat boy. Enjoy! :)


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